Gaming has grown to be a huge industry as well as a popular pastime for many children. If you are one of the many parents who has trouble limiting your children’s time on computer games you are not alone. The good news is that there are now parental control solutions that can help you limit the time your child spends playing computer games.

Refog recently released a parental control software solution that allows parents to control how long your child uses the computer as well as the specific applications they are allowed to use. Regardless if you have multiple users on one PC or a single user you can still set rules and restrictions for each user account so your child only spends a limited amount of time on computer games.

How Parental Control Software Works

Time Sheriff parental control software is easy to set up and configure and allows you to set restrictions for individual users or a group of users which helps you to manage family time on the computer in your household. The software maintains a log of who used the computer, how long they were logged on and how much time they spent on specific applications such as games.

This type of parental control software is by Refog and is available as a free trial download for 30 days to allow you to test drive the features. Time Sheriff works through Windows access controls which are what allow you to control each user account on the PC. As the administrator of the software you have a master password you use to access the software dashboard to configure controls, set policies, and view recorded logs.

Dashboard Controls

Once you are logged in to the parental control software application you are presented with a dashboard where you can view all user accounts on your PC, the settings panel, and the applications where you can set rules and policies for usage. You simply click on the user’s account where you would like to set restrictions and then open up the Setup Wizard by clicking on “Tools” on the main toolbar.

The Setup Wizard walks you through the process of setting restrictions and time limitations on the user’s account. Once the wizard opens up you simply tick the box next to the user’s account you want to limit and then click on “Next.” You can then proceed to enter the user’s maximum session time per day or configure a schedule for specific days of the week and then select a method for locking the computer when the time limit is complete.

In the next screen you can select the program groups where you want to place the limits such as web browsers, messengers, games, and multimedia applications. You simply select the programs by ticking the box next to the ones you want to limit, set up the group and then set the default maximum allowed time per day. Once you set the limitations the Setup Wizard will confirm the changes you made to the account and then you simply click on “Finish” to complete the process.

Once you have completed setting the rules and restrictions you can configure the settings to hide the parental control software program from view by choosing “Hide Everywhere” or selecting from the options underneath. You can also take advantage of the advanced reporting features that allow you to see exactly who used your PC, when they logged on and logged off, when they used your PC, and how long they ran the applications.

Computer gaming is becoming more widely recognized as an addiction so if you are able to catch your child’s activity early on you can prevent them from becoming susceptible to a full fledged addiction. It will also help your child learn how to management their time wisely which will be to their advantage when they get older while you guard their safety online as well.

It is important to be aware of inferior parental control solutions that do not do the job and are easy for your children to circumvent. The type of high quality parental control software we have discussed here runs silently in the background until it is time to intervene when the time limitations have been reached and it is difficult for your children to circumvent.