WhatsApp Rolls Out Optional Parental Controls for Teens Amid Safety Concerns

The company said the controls are intended to help parents and teenagers agree on how the platform should be used while ensuring that personal conversations remain private.

Under the new features, parents can select privacy settings for their teenagers, including who can see their profile photo and who can add them to groups. If a teenager attempts to make these settings less restrictive, approval through a parent-set PIN will be required.

Parents will also be notified when their teenager joins or leaves a group or when a group's membership increases significantly. Additional controls will allow parents to manage aspects of their teen's use of Channels, including which Status updates they can view and who can see their own Status updates.

WhatsApp is also adding parental controls for the Meta AI experience available to teenagers. Parents can choose to retain the default 13+ setting or select a stricter “Limited Content” option based on the level of restrictions they want to apply.

The company said the controls will be rolled out gradually and refined based on feedback from families. The broader aim is to encourage conversations between parents and teenagers about responsible use of the platform without giving up the privacy of personal communications.

The controls are entirely optional, and parents can adjust or disable them at any time. WhatsApp said that even when parental controls are activated, teenagers' personal messages and calls will continue to be protected by end-to-end encryption.

According to the company, no one outside a chat, including WhatsApp itself, can access or listen to users' personal messages and calls.

The latest measures build on WhatsApp's previous efforts to provide parents with greater oversight of younger users' accounts. Earlier this year, the platform introduced tools allowing parents and guardians to adjust communication settings and restrict certain features so that pre-teens could primarily use WhatsApp for messaging and calls.