This is a guide for how to setup a Steam Deck for your child. Or for an adult who wants to have their access to harmful content on the Steam Deck restricted to aid in their addiction recovery journey.

-If you do not already have a Steam Account, create one to use as the Adult account which will manage your Steam Family.

-Create a second Steam Account which will end up being a Child account. This is what you will log into for the Steam Deck for the child or adult to use. Any game purchases made on this account will be available for use by the child account since they are part of the Steam Family as long as you enable library sharing in the main account. You will be shown how to choose which games are shared later.

-In the Adult account, setup a Steam Family and add the second account as a Child account managed under the Steam Family you will want to have added the second account as a friend so they show up here.

-You will then be required to accept the invitation to the family on Steam in the Child account, and then to receive an email and approve the request from the email. You should be logged in to the Child account in the same browser for this step as well so that when you click approve on the email, it can access the Steam account and fully approve the setting. It's confusing, I know.

-Next choose the option to manage the Steam Family in the Adult account and click to edit the preferences for the Child account and change the following:

-Toggle on, "Enable parental controls for this user"
-Library option Available library content, choose "Only games I choose" and select only appropriate games.
-Toggle OFF, "Allow access to the Steam store"
-Toggle OFF, "Allow access to community generated content"
-Following 3 options are at your discretion

Important: of the 10 tick boxes for content, make sure that at least the bottom 4 are off. All of those options are 100% adult content that's only intended to be pornographic.

The section which says, "Nudity or Sexual Content will have some games which are not necessarily intended to be pornographic, but which will include adult sexual content in some form like Cyberpunk 2077. Tick these options off for younger users who shouldn't be playing games like this anyway or for users who would find this content triggering for their journey in quitting pornography.

The top 4 tick boxes can be ticked on or off at your discretion.

-Final important step!!!
Be sure to go into the Security options on the Steam Deck in Gaming Mode and toggle on the following (this will require you to request access to the feature for 1 hour from the Adult who manages your Steam Family. It would be best to be sure the child doesn't tick these boxes back off again for that hour until the access is again revoked):
-"Before showing login screen"
-"When switching to desktop mode"
and create a PIN to lock these functions in the toggled on position. This prevents accessing Desktop Mode, which is a completely uncontrolled desktop environment which can access the internet. It also prevents logging into another account which will not have parental controls setup.

-Final important note!!!
The child (or adult) who uses the device that is setup to be protected should not have access to the password for the Steam Account they're using as this can enable them to setup the PIN which blocks access to the Desktop Mode. They also should not have access to be able to make changes to Steam settings on the Adult's account which manages the Steam Family as this will allow them to disable the Steam Parental Controls altogether.