WhatsApp adds new parental controls for teen accounts

WhatsApp is introducing new parental controls that could allow guardians to keep a tab on who their teens interact with, and also choose content settings for Meta AI chats.

With the new controls, parents can limit how teens use channels, whose Status they can see, and who can see their Status updates. Guardians can also control who can add teens to groups or who can see their profile picture. Parents can also choose to get a notification when a teen joins a new group, leaves one, or the group size grows to 30, 100, or 250 members.

All of these settings are gated behind a PIN set by parents, so if a teen needs to change anything, they would need their parents’ approval. Guardians can also turn these controls off completely.

Besides these settings, parents can also set content settings for Meta AI. There’s now an option to choose the default 13+ setting, or a stricter ‘Limited Content’ option that disables private processing-based features like incognito chat and message summaries.

WhatsApp said despite these new controls, messages and calls on the app remain end-to-end encrypted, and no one can see them.

Meta has been on the receiving end of several lawsuits that accuse the company’s social media products of causing harm to children. Lawmakers have pressed Meta and, in particular, Instagram, on the company’s delays to launch teen safety features. In August, the company agreed to pay a hefty $18 billion fine to settle a lawsuit brought by 29 states in the U.S.

The company has been aggressive in introducing features to protect children across its apps. This year, it has rolled out movie rating-inspired content controls, launched parental controls for interactions with Meta AI, added pre-teen accounts on WhatsApp, and started alerting parents if their children search for self-harm content on Instagram.

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Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web.

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