How to use parental controls in the EA app

We want you to have the information you need to understand the play habits of both your account and your teen’s account.

If you have an adult EA Account, you can link your teen's account to yours to create a Family account. This lets you manage their playtime and control how much they’re spending.

What’s a teen account?

The age for a teen account varies by country.

Teen accounts have a default spending limit of zero, whether or not they’re linked to an adult account. The only way to modify those limits is to link a teen account to a parent or guardian’s Family account.

From the EA app:

1. Launch the EA app and log in to your EA Account.
2. Select the menu icon (it looks like 3 horizontal lines) in the top left corner of the app and choose Settings.
3. Select Family playtime.
4. Scroll down to Family management.
5. Select Add Teen Account.
6. Enter the email address that’s linked to your teen’s EA Account.

From your EA Account settings:

1. Go to your Family Management tab.
2. Select Add account.
3. Enter the email address that’s linked to your teen’s EA Account.
4. Select Send invite.

We’ll send an invitation to your teen’s account. They’ll need to accept the invite within 24 hours to become part of your Family account.

To learn about your playtime

1. Launch the EA app and log into your EA Account.
2. Select the menu icon (it looks like 3 horizontal lines) in the top left corner of the app and choose Settings.
3. Select My playtime.
4. Select Manage under Playtime controls.

Here, you can view your playtime and set guidelines.

You can set different guidelines for weekdays and weekends. To set different guidelines for each day of the week, turn on Customize daily playtime limits.

To learn about your teen’s playtime

View playtime activity

1. Link your teen’s account to your EA Account if you haven’t already. 
2. Once they’ve accepted your invitation, go to Settings and select Family playtime to see how much time your teens have logged playing their games.

Set playtime guidelines

1. From Family playtime, find the teen account you want to set playtime guidelines for and select Manage. This will open the playtime dashboard for their account.
2. Scroll down and select Manage again.



3. Turn on Manage player controls to set playtime guidelines for weekdays and weekends, or turn on Customize daily playtime limits to have different set guidelines for each day of the week.

How to add playtime

If you want to increase your playtime, follow the steps above for either your account or your teen’s account to view your playtime.

You can increase your time by selecting Manage and increasing your playtime limit.

There are two different spend limits you can change for all accounts:

• Game and expansion limit: includes base game and deluxe edition purchases, expansion packs, and additional downloadable content (DLC).
• Microcontent limit: includes virtual currency purchases and other purchasable content.

Your account

You can set up monthly spend limits for games, expansions, and microcontent. By default, your account doesn't have any spend limits set up.

To change your spend limits:

1. Go to your EA Account Payment and Wallet tab.
2. Select Monthly spend limit.
3. Click Edit next to Games and expansions or In-game content.
4. Choose Custom amount and enter how much you'd like to spend.

Once you set a limit for how much you want to spend, you can check here to see how much you have left for the month.

Your Family's teen accounts

Just like your own account, you can change the spend limits for all your teens’ accounts that you’ve linked to your Family.

Here’s how:

1. Go to your EA Account Family Management.
2. Select Manage teen account.
3. Click Manage underneath the teen’s account that you want to update.
4. Under Games and expansions, put in a custom spend limit, then select Save.

What isn’t controlled by spend limits?

Spend limit controls apply to ea.com, the EA app, and other EA webstores. The following don’t come out of your monthly spend limit:

• EA Play memberships and other subscriptions
• taxes and fees for all purchases.

We’ll charge the payment method saved to your EA Account directly for all taxes, fees, and recurring memberships and subscriptions.

The Family Activity Report is a great way to get a snapshot summary of weekly activity. It shows time spent playing games and the total cost of purchases made. If there’s no activity for a given week, you won’t get a report.

Once a teen account is connected to your adult account, you’ll automatically get the Family Activity Report by email weekly.

If you don’t want to get the report, you can adjust your email preferences in the EA app:

1. Launch the EA app and log in to your EA Account.
2. Select the menu icon (it looks like 3 lines) in the top left corner of the app and choose Settings.
3. Select Family playtime.
4. Toggle Family Activity Report off.