After introducing parent-managed accounts for pre-teens earlier this year, WhatsApp today extended parental controls to teen accounts, adding warnings about group activity and further restrictions for Meta AI. Here are the details.
WhatsApp expands parental control options
Earlier this year, WhatsApp announced a series of new features aimed at giving parents more control over their preteens’ accounts.
This included allowing parents to decide who can contact the account and which groups it can join, review message requests from unknown contacts, and manage its privacy settings, with changes protected by a PIN set by parents.
Then, a few weeks ago, WhatsApp further expanded the functionality on iOS by adding a dedicated “Parental Controls” section to the Settings app, making it easier for parents to find and set up a managed account.
Today, WhatsApp has expanded these controls once again, this time bringing parental controls to teens rather than just preteens, while also giving parents more visibility into group activity and more say in how their teens interact with channels, status updates, and, perhaps most importantly, Meta AI.
With the update, parents can now receive notifications when their teens join or leave a group, as well as when a group they’re already in “grows significantly in size.” Parents can now also choose how their children can use channels, which status updates they can see, and who can see theirs.
As for Meta AI, parents can now choose between the standard experience designed for users aged 13 and up, or a more stringent “Restricted Content” option, depending on what they deem appropriate for their teenagers.
According to WhatsApp, the Limited setting further limits the topics a teen can discuss with Meta AI. Meta AI features that rely on private processing are also not available when the setting is enabled.
As before, WhatsApp notes that these parental controls do not allow parents to access their children’s real messages or calls, which remain protected by end-to-end encryption.
To find out more about WhatsApp’s new managed teen accounts, follow this link.
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