WhatsApp has announced new parental account features for teens, while its parent-managed accounts for pre-teens are also rolling out gradually worldwide. For pre-teens, parent-managed accounts allow parents or guardians to control who can contact their child, which groups they can join and their account’s privacy settings. For teens, parental controls allow parents to manage privacy settings and features including Meta AI, Status and Channels, while also providing updates and notifications about selected account activity.
Parent-managed accounts for pre-teens: WhatsApp designed its parent-managed accounts specifically for younger users, and they give parents control over whom their child can communicate with and which groups their child can join. The accounts focus on messaging and calling rather than the full WhatsApp experience.
Contacts and message requests: By default, a managed account can only message people saved in the child’s contacts.
- Adding a new contact alerts the parent.
- Messages from people outside the child’s contacts go into a message requests folder.
- Parents can review these requests to approve or decline them.
- Parents can also block or report contacts.
Personal messages and calls remain end-to-end encrypted, meaning parents cannot read or listen to them.
Group controls: Parents have greater control over group participation.
- Only parents can directly add a managed account to a group.
- Children cannot create groups themselves.
- Group invitations require parental approval.
- Parents receive alerts about group invitations and when an existing group grows in size.
Parents can also control who can see information such as the child’s profile photo, About information and online status, as well as who can contact the account and add it to groups.
Activity alerts: Parents can see updates about activity on the managed account, including when a child adds a contact or when a group grows. They can also receive notifications covering:
- New message requests
- Contacts added, blocked or reported
- Groups created, joined or left
- Disappearing messages being enabled in a group
- Changes to the child’s name or profile picture.
Parental controls for teens: For teenagers, WhatsApp is introducing optional parental controls rather than a separate managed account. Parents and teens can both view the teen’s privacy settings, but making them less restrictive requires parental approval through a PIN.
Privacy control: Parents can manage settings determining who can see the teen’s information and who can contact them. The controls cover options including profile visibility and other privacy settings. Teens can continue to view and adjust their own privacy settings, although moving to a less restrictive setting requires approval from the parent.
Meta AI controls: There are two levels for a teen’s access to Meta AI:
- Standard: allows discussions generally aligned with content ratings for users aged 13 and above.
- Limited: places further restrictions on the topics the teen can discuss. Meta AI features using Private Processing are unavailable under this setting.
Status controls: Parents can manage both whose Status updates their teen can see and who can see the teen’s Status. The options include the teen’s contacts, contacts except selected users, selected contacts, or nobody.
Channels controls: Parents can decide how their teen uses WhatsApp Channels from the following options:
- All: the teen can view all channels.
- Parent-approved only: the teen can view channels approved by a parent or guardian.
- None: the teen cannot view channels.
Parents can view updates about their teen’s WhatsApp activity, receive notifications about selected events, and also allow or prevent their teen from creating channels.
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