Systems and methods are disclosed herein for applying behavioral-based parental controls for media assets. The disclosed techniques herein discuss determining a media asset viewed by a user and character actions of a character within the media asset. Behavioral user data is received which includes a user action. A determination is made whether the user action matches one of the character actions. If a match is found, a parental control restriction setting for the media asset is applied and this parental control restriction is stored in memory.