Reddit Parental Controls: Can You Make It Safer for Kids?

Reddit is the front page of the internet with over 110 million daily users. It’s the place that many people go for information and entertainment. What’s interesting is that Reddit’s demographic is expansive; there is such a cross-section of generations, with many users being teenagers and young adults.

Perhaps your child wants to start using Reddit, and you’re concerned about how you can make it safe for them. You have come to the right place.

Our HeyLocate team is your guard for kids’ safety anywhere online, even on such a seemingly harmless platform.

Further, we’ll review how to set up Reddit parental controls by managing a child’s or teen’s account and through third-party apps.

What is Reddit (For New Users)

The chances that you have never used Reddit are low, but if so, you should know that it is a social media website and forum that launched in 2005. The platform is organized into communities, known as subreddits, and its users are referred to as Redditors.

Subreddits are user-created and cover a wide range of topics, from sports to celebrity gossip and everything in between (r/teenagers, r/trueofmychest, etc.).

How Does Reddit Work

Reddit members can ask questions and post links. They can also comment on what other people have posted. Non-Reddit members can see posts and comments, but they cannot post or leave comments.

Posts can be upvoted or downvoted depending on whether people like them. If a post is upvoted, it receives better Reddit rankings and moves up, allowing more people to see it. If it’s downvoted, it indicates to Reddit that the topic is unhelpful, and its ranking consequently drops. The post eventually disappears.

Reddit Age Restriction

The minimum age for creating an account on Reddit is 13 years; however, the platform does not verify a person’s age during registration. Moreover, the Play Store has assigned a 12+ age category to the Reddit app.

Therefore, kids can report that they have met the minimum age requirement even if they have not.

Remember that anyone can read posts and comments on Reddit even if they don’t have a Reddit account.

It’s essential to prioritize communicating with your child about how they should use Reddit and why you need to apply safety measures to their account. Otherwise, kids can change the settings and revert to the default Reddit features.

Is Reddit Safe for Kids to Use?

Reddit provides an extensive database of knowledge, which can be a positive experience for teens and young people. There are also safe spaces for support and advice in various subreddits, including r/adviceforteens and r/mentalhealth.

⚠️ However, Reddit is an open-ended platform, which makes it unsafe for young visitors. Some posts are not suitable for kids under the age of 18. Such posts feature adult content marked NSFW, which is an acronym for (Not Safe For Work). This means the posts contain nudity, sex, and pornography.

Moreover, the platform relies on users to mark such posts as NSFW according to Reddit’s content policy. Unfortunately, that means that many subreddits contain unmarked adult content that kids can encounter.

In fact, Reddit has a long history of controversial subreddits (from racism and harassment to nudity and drugs) and has been accused of slow reaction in banning those communities in numerous instances.

If you think that your child is not ready for Reddit, you can block it using tools for blocking websites on Android or restricting websites on iPhone.

If you decide to just limit or control their Reddit usage, read further.

Manage Teens’ Reddit Account

Reddit doesn’t have built-in parental controls or a Supervision/Guardian feature. You can only thoroughly set up your child’s Reddit account to make their experience safer.

We recommend creating a youngster’s account using your email address. This way, you can set a strong password that your child will not be able to change. Additionally, it allows you to view the subreddits they are subscribed to and adjust various settings (go to Reddit User Profile > Settings > Email and turn on notifications you want to get about their account).

If your minor already has a Reddit account, you need to talk to them about safe usage and manage all settings while remembering that they can change them anytime.

Adjust Privacy Settings

Reddit’s privacy settings are great for adjusting different features on the platform. You can manage your child’s social interactions and discoverability. Thus, you can prevent other people from following them and control who can message them or send chat requests.

To manage social interactions on Reddit:

1. Open your child’s Reddit and click on their profile menu in the top right corner.
2. Under Settings, click on Privacy.
3. In the first section, Social interactions, push the button next to “Allow People to Follow You” to turn it off. It should become gray.
4. Next to Who can send you chat requests change it from Everyone to Nobody or enter the usernames of Redditors who can send chat requests.

You can also block users using the Blocked accounts function. Blocking a user prevents them from accessing your child’s profile or seeing and replying to their posts and comments in communities.

To block someone on Reddit:

Click Blocked accounts, add the username of the Redditor you want to block, and click Save.

To manage Discoverability:

1. Go to Settings > Privacy > click the button next to “List your profile on old.reddit.com/users” to turn it off.
2. Similarly, click the button next to “Show up in search results” to disable it as well.

Thus, your child’s profile won’t be discoverable through the Reddit users list or search engines like Google.

Set Up Content Preferences

Now, let’s try to control what content your youngster may encounter on Reddit.

1. Click Preferences under Reddit Settings.
2. In the Content section, click the button next to “Show mature content (I’m over 18)” to turn it off. Again, it will turn gray when off. When you turn off mature content, it will automatically remove the blur option for 18+ content.
3. Click the button next to “Show recommendations in home feed” to turn it off. This way, your child will search for content instead of scrolling to discover content that Reddit recommends.

And here’s one more essential step. Even if you disable mature content in Preferences, there is still one more setting to be set. Go to Profile in Settings > Curate your profile > turn off “NSFW“ (Not Safe for Work, mature content).

Provide Help with Reporting Users and Content on Reddit

It’s vital that kids know how to report users and content on Reddit for a safer online environment. They can flag inappropriate, abusive, and dangerous behavior like bullying, hate speech, and grooming.

To report a user or content on Reddit:

1. Open the report page on Reddit using this URL: https://www.reddit.com/report.
   
2. Click Account to report a user.
3. Enter the account’s username and click Next.
4. Select a reason why you’re reporting them, such as impersonation or spam, and tap Next. Depending on your reason, you will be required to provide further information. For example, if it’s impersonation, you have to say whether they are impersonating you or someone else.
5. Click Submit to report the person.
6. When reporting Content, enter the link to the harmful content, and click Next. Give a reason why you are reporting the content and click Submit.
7. To report someone for ban evasion, you must be a moderator of the community they’ve been banned from.
   

When you report an account or user on Reddit, moderators will review the report and take one of the following actions: remove the offending material, issue a warning to the user, or permanently ban the account.

Help Your Child Join Safe Subreddits

The thing is, when your child joins Reddit, they will be automatically subscribed to popular subreddits, such as r/pics, r/funny, and r/news, among others.
You can help your minor clean up their feed by leaving the default subreddits and joining safe subreddits. These can be friendly communities, such as educational, motivational, creative, and fun.

To manage subreddits:

1. Open Reddit and navigate to the burger menu on the upper-left side of the page.
2. Click on Manage Communities.
3. Click Joined on the right side of each subreddit. It will now say Join, which means your child is no longer part of that community.

Settings for Children on the Reddit App

Reddit also has its own app, which can be downloaded from the Google Play Store or App Store. It has similar privacy settings with slightly different navigation and some additional controls. Let’s have a quick overview.

Restrict Mature Content

1. Tap the profile picture and choose Curate your profile to manage the content of the account and disable “NSFW” content.
   
2. Then tap Settings, and ensure that the “Show mature content” feature is disabled (when it is, the next row, “Blur mature (18+) images and media”, is grey).
   

Safety & Privacy

1. Tap on the profile picture > Settings > Account settings.
2. In the Safety section, manage blocked accounts, chat, and follower permissions – just like through the web version.
3. In the Privacy section below, there is one more access to the Curate your profile feature.
4. Scroll further and turn off “Show up in search results”.

Manage Sensitive Advertising

You can see this section further below in Settings > Account Settings.

⚠️ These controls weren’t available through the website, but they are essential. You can choose what categories you’d rather not allow your child to see ads about, like alcohol, dating, and gambling ads, etc.

Tap each one you want to disable.

To block the Reddit app completely, use our guide for blocking apps on Android and blocking apps on iPhone.

Reddit Monitoring with Parental Control App

When the mentioned settings are not enough, or you worry that your child may change them, opt for third-party parental control tools, like tracking and monitoring tools.

Advantage: you will be able to see any social media activity, not only on Reddit.

Disadvantages: Most of these tools should be installed on your kid’s device to monitor what they are doing on it. That means you won’t be able to see their Reddit usage from another device, for example, a tablet or PC.

The point is that a standard parental control app monitors a device, not a Reddit account. Still, with an app like uMobix you can get screenshots of the child’s phone with everything they are doing there, including chats on Reddit.

The information is for educational purposes only. We cover all legal options available on the market, but you still need to use them ethically and with the consent of your children. Remember that open communication and education about online safety should never be replaced with a phone tracker.

To use a parental control phone tracker:

1. Visit the website of the chosen app (most family trackers require buying a subscription, e.g. Bark, mSpy, uMobix). Get the instructions for installation on the child’s phone.
2. Download, install, and configure the app.
3. Open the online dashboard and find the relevant feature. It can be a Keylogger (that sees what they type) or the Browser history to see their Reddit searches.
4. Go to the Apps feature to see if they have downloaded the Reddit app. You can block it from there.

Conclusion

Reddit is an excellent forum for creating and sharing content, but at the same time, controversial subreddits emerge regularly. Thus, making it a safe space is a priority for parents of teens who access the platform.

Start by discussing how to stay safe on Reddit, explore the forum, and utilize the available settings for Reddit parental controls.

Don’t stop at that; continue to check in with your child. If you feel that they are not ready to use Reddit, it’s better to wait until they are old enough to identify dangerous and harmful users and content.

Anyway, HeyLocate recommends considering using parental controls for Android phones and iPhone’s Screen Time feature to limit or block websites’ and apps’ usage by kids. Surf through our blog for more information and detailed reviews of different tools and parental control at its core.