Is Fortnite Safe? An Honest Fortnite Rating for Parents

Harmful Content 😲

Violence

Make no mistake: Fortnite is a first-person shooter game, which means that the primary goal is to kill other players. This sort of violence is tempered by the cartoon graphics in the game, but graphic attacks are definitely common. 

Chat

Like a lot of video games, Fortnite features in-game voice and text chat. While this may be fine if your kid is playing with their friends, when they’re playing with strangers it can be an issue. Racial slurs, profanity, sexual content, and more are often bandied about in intense moments throughout the game.

Predation 🚨

Fortnite, like any video game with chat capabilities, can be a haven for online predators — which is certainly something we wanted to consider when calculating our Fortnite rating. These adults strike up friendships with children while playing and eventually move conversations to other platforms, like Discord or Snapchat. Some even manipulate kids with promises of Fortnite V-bucks, the in-game currency.

Privacy 🔒

Through the game’s parental controls (discussed in detail below), you can create a relatively private experience for your kid, especially if you don’t let them play with strangers. From settings, you can hide other player’s names and make your child appear anonymous.

Parental Controls ✅

Fortnite has fairly extensive in-game parental controls, which is a breath of fresh air considering how many apps and games don’t. Even better, you can set a code to password-protect your changes. From the settings menu in-game, you can: 

• Toggle off mature language from appearing in chat
• Disable friend requests
• Set your child’s name to “anonymous” to non-squad members
• Replace the names of non-squad members with “player”
• Disable voice chat
• Disable text chat
• Require a PIN to add friends

In addition to in-game settings, parental controls on consoles like Xbox and PlayStation give you even more options, like access to multiplayer gaming.

Bark also provides support for Fortnite players. We’re here to help you keep your kid safe by allowing you to:

• Block Fortnite entirely, if needed.
• Manage when your child can play Fortnite throughout the day.

So, should my kid download it?

Maybe — the potential for predation is fairly high, however, so it’s important to talk with your kid and even sit down with them while they play it to learn more about it. With supervision and parental controls in place, it can be made safer.