WhatsApp has introduced new parental controls for teenagers, giving parents more oversight over how their children use the messaging platform while keeping personal conversations private.
The tools allow parents to manage certain privacy settings, receive selected group activity alerts and restrict how teenagers use features such as Channels, Status and Meta AI.
What can parents control on WhatsApp?
Parents can choose who can see their teenager’s profile photo and who can add them to groups. These settings can be made more restrictive to limit who can interact with the teenager on the platform.
If a teenager later wants to make these privacy settings less restrictive, parental approval will be required through a PIN set by the parent. This means a teenager cannot change a parent-managed privacy setting without approval.
Parents can get alerts about group activity
The new controls also provide parents with some information about their teenager’s group activity.
Parents can receive a notification when their teenager joins or leaves a group. They can also be notified when a group that the teenager is part of grows significantly in size. However, these notifications do not provide access to conversations or other content shared in the group.
What happens to Meta AI?
Meta AI is also covered by the new parental controls. Parents can choose between the standard Meta AI experience available to users aged 13 and above and a stricter setting called “limited content” for their teenager.
This gives parents an additional way to manage their teenager’s Meta AI experience on WhatsApp.
Can parents read their teenager’s WhatsApp chats?
No. The parental controls do not give parents access to private messages or calls.
WhatsApp said personal messages and calls will continue to be protected by end-to-end encryption even when parental controls are switched on. This means people outside a conversation, including WhatsApp, cannot read or hear those messages and calls.
Parents can, therefore, control certain account and privacy settings and receive selected activity alerts, but they cannot use the parental controls to read their teenager’s private conversations.
How does the parent PIN work?
A parent can set a PIN while configuring the controls. The PIN is used to approve changes when a teenager wants to loosen certain restrictions.
The controls are not permanent. WhatsApp said parents can change the settings or switch parental controls off if they no longer want to use them. The company has described the feature as a first step and said it plans to develop the controls further based on feedback from families.
Are WhatsApp parental controls mandatory?
No. WhatsApp said the controls are optional.
Parents can decide how much oversight they want for their teenager and can set up the controls together with them.
The company said the feature is intended to support conversations between parents and teenagers about how they use WhatsApp rather than give parents unrestricted access to their children’s activity.
The rollout is being introduced gradually, so the controls may not appear for every user immediately. Parents may need to update WhatsApp and check whether the parental controls option is available on their accounts.
WhatsApp Business pricing changes from October 1
Separately, WhatsApp is changing the pricing structure for its Business Platform in India from October 1.
Businesses will get 1,000 free service messages per phone number each month. After that, service messages will cost Rs 0.115 each. Utility messages, including transactional or account-related messages such as order updates, will also be charged at Rs 0.115 per delivered message in India. Authentication messages will carry the same rate, while the marketing message rate will remain Rs 0.8631 per delivered message.
These are Meta’s published rates before applicable taxes or fees charged by third-party providers.
