WhatsApp on Wednesday (September 30, 2026) announced that it was introducing parental controls for teens.
WhatsApp confirmed that even with the parental controls in place, teens’ chats would stay private and protected by end-to-end encryption. The new features will allow parents and teens to customise their privacy settings on WhatsApp, with a parent-set PIN helping make sure that the teen does not bypass the controls without the adult’s approval. Furthermore, parents will be notified about their teens joining or exiting groups, as well as when groups grow in size. Parents can further control their teen’s use of Channels, the Status updates they view and share, and the Meta AI experience. The settings are optional, WhatsApp noted in its blog post, so they can be both adjusted and turned off. “This is just the start. We’re building these controls step by step, based on what families tell us they need.
As a result, parents can now decide who can see their teen children’s profile photos or add them to groups. For AI, they can choose between a default 13+ setting and a stricter ‘Limited Content’ setting.
All of these controls are being designed to support open conversations about how to use WhatsApp between parents and teens, while keeping everyone’s personal messages private,” said WhatsApp in a blog post.
