Spotify Safety Guide for Parents
What parents need to know about Spotify — including explicit music and podcast content, social listening features, and the lack of built-in parental controls.
Official age
13+
We recommend
13+
Developer
Spotify
Risks
2
Overview
Spotify is the world's largest music streaming service, with over 600 million users. It offers music, podcasts, and audiobooks. While primarily a listening platform, Spotify includes social features that allow users to see what friends are listening to and create collaborative playlists. The platform hosts a vast amount of explicit music content and podcasts on mature themes with little restriction by default. Notably, Spotify does not offer a dedicated parental control mode or family dashboard, making it harder to manage what children can access.
How children use it
Children use Spotify to listen to music, discover new artists, and follow playlists curated by influencers or friends. Podcasts on topics including true crime, relationships, and mental health are increasingly popular with teenagers. The social listening feature means children's listening habits can be visible to their followers, which raises modest privacy concerns.
Main risks
Recommended privacy settings
Private Listening
Location: Profile → Settings → Social → Private Session
Set to: On when desired
Enabling a Private Session prevents your child's listening activity from being shared with their followers via Spotify's social features. Sessions expire after 6 hours.
Explicit Content Filter
Location: Profile → Settings → Explicit Content → Allow Explicit Content
Set to: Off
Turning this off prevents explicit tracks from playing. Note that this filter applies to tracks labelled explicit by rights holders — some tracks with adult content may not be labelled and will still play.
Social Features
Location: Profile → Settings → Social
Set to: Review and restrict as appropriate
Spotify's social settings control whether your child's listening activity, playlists, and followed artists are visible to others. Turning off public activity reduces privacy exposure.
Parent actions
Turn off explicit content in Spotify settings on your child's account or device and explain that the filter, while imperfect, removes the majority of labelled adult tracks
Time: 5 minutes
Review podcast content your child is following — search Spotify for their followed shows and listen to a few episodes to assess suitability
Time: 20 minutes
Consider using Spotify's family plan and encourage your child to use a private session if they do not want their listening visible to followers
Time: 10 minutes