Parental controls let you restrict which audience levels are visible on your account and lock that setting behind a PIN. Once set, someone using the account sees only the age bands you allowed, and cannot widen it without the PIN.
Turning them on
- Go to your profile and open the Parental Controls tab.
- Tick the audiences you want to allow. Audiences are the age bands stories are written for, so allowing only the younger ones filters everything else out of the library.
- Set a PIN of 4 to 6 digits and confirm it.
- Save.
To change the settings later, or to turn them off, you enter the current PIN first. That applies to every change, including adding a single audience, which is the point: the restriction is only meaningful if it cannot be quietly widened.
What the filter actually does
The audience restriction applies at both the query and the page level. Restricted stories do not appear in the library grid, in search results, in recommendations or via a direct link. It is not a UI-only filter that a curious child can route around by pasting a URL.
If you forget the PIN
Contact support from the help page using the email address on the account. Because the PIN protects a child-safety setting, resets are handled manually rather than through a self-service form.
BookZeta Kids
There is a separate BookZeta Kids app for roughly ages 2 to 12. Rather than filtering an adult catalog, it is built around a permanently age-gated one: only stories in the youngest audience bands that have also passed a safety check appear at all, and the interface is designed for young readers.
If you are setting up a device for a child rather than sharing your own, the Kids app is the better starting point. See Using BookZeta on iPhone and Android.
What parental controls do not do
- They do not restrict creating. They filter what can be read. If a child is going to create stories on the account, supervise that separately.
- They are per account, not per device. Someone signing into a different account on the same device gets that account's settings.
- They are not a content rating system. Audiences describe who a story was written for, which is a good proxy but not a guarantee about every sentence in every story. Reviewing what a young reader is reading is still worth doing.
If you find a story that is in the wrong audience band, report it from the story page. Mis-categorized content gets moved or removed.