WhatsApp has broadened its parental control features to include teenage accounts, adding group activity alerts and additional safeguards for Meta AI interactions. Here’s what you need to know.
WhatsApp enhances parental control capabilities
Earlier this year, WhatsApp revealed a range of new features designed to provide parents with greater oversight of their pre-teens’ accounts. These updates included allowing parents to determine who can reach the account and which groups it can join, review message requests from unknown contacts, and manage privacy settings, with modifications secured by a parent-defined PIN.
A few weeks ago, WhatsApp further expanded the feature on iOS by incorporating a dedicated ‘Parental controls’ section within the Settings app, simplifying the process for parents to locate and configure a managed account.
Today, WhatsApp has once again extended these controls, this time bringing parental controls to teenage users rather than just pre-teens, while offering parents increased visibility into group activities and greater influence over how their teens engage with Channels, Status updates, and, perhaps most significantly, Meta AI.
With this update, parents can now receive alerts when their teen joins or exits a group, as well as when a group they are already part of ‘expands meaningfully in size.’ Parents can also select how their teen can access Channels, which Status updates they can view, and who is permitted to see their own.
Regarding Meta AI, parents can now choose between the standard experience intended for users aged 13 and older, or a more restrictive ‘Limited Content’ option, based on their preferences for their teen’s experience.
According to WhatsApp, the Limited setting further narrows the topics a teen can discuss with Meta AI. Meta AI functions that depend on Private Processing are also inaccessible when this setting is active.
As with previous updates, WhatsApp clarifies that these parental controls do not grant parents access to their teen’s actual messages or calls, which continue to be safeguarded by end-to-end encryption.
To learn more about WhatsApp’s newly introduced managed teen accounts, follow this link.