WhatsApp Adds New Parental Controls for Teens With Meta AI and Group Settings

WhatsApp is rolling out a new set of parental controls for teens, giving families more ways to manage privacy, groups, Channels, Status updates and Meta AI without giving parents access to their teen’s private conversations.

The new controls are optional and are designed to be configured by parents and teens together. WhatsApp says the goal is to give parents more visibility while keeping personal messages and calls private.

Parents can control who interacts with their teens

Parents will be able to choose privacy settings such as who can see their teen’s profile picture and who can add them to groups. If a teen later tries to loosen one of these restrictions, approval through a parent-set PIN will be required.

Parents will also receive notifications when their teen joins or leaves a group. They can also be alerted when a group their teen belongs to grows significantly.

The new controls extend to WhatsApp Channels and Status. Parents can decide how their teen uses Channels, whose Status updates they can view and who can view their teen’s Status.

Meta AI gets a new parental control

WhatsApp is also giving parents control over the Meta AI experience available to their teen. Parents can choose between the standard 13+ setting and a stricter Limited Content option. The more restrictive setting limits certain Meta AI features and content.

WhatsApp says the controls are protected by a single parent-set PIN, while parents can adjust or disable them whenever they choose.

Private messages remain private

More importantly, enabling the new parental controls does not give parents access to their teen’s personal WhatsApp messages or calls. WhatsApp says those conversations remain protected by end-to-end encryption, meaning the messages and calls remain accessible only to the people involved in the conversation.

The new teen controls build on WhatsApp’s earlier introduction of parent-managed accounts for pre-teens, which let parents control who can contact a child and which groups they can join.