A program playback control method and a terminal. The method comprises: a video application running on a terminal receives a program playback instruction, the program playback instruction comprising information associated with a program requested to be played; the video application reads a playback control policy preset by the terminal, and determines, according to the content attribute of the program requested to be played and the read playback control policy, whether to perform playback control on the program requested to be played; if yes, invoke a permission authentication application and obtain a permission authentication result returned by the permission authentication application; and perform playback control on the program requested to be played according to the permission authentication result. The permission authentication application is independent from the video application, and is configured to obtain permission authentication information input by a user, authenticate the permission authentication information, and return a permission authentication result.