Meta Platforms has announced a new feature for WhatsApp designed to give families more control over how younger users communicate on the platform. The messaging app is rolling out parent-managed accounts, allowing parents or guardians to set up and supervise WhatsApp access for pre-teens.
The new system aims to ensure younger users can stay connected with family and friends while limiting their experience primarily to messaging and voice calls under parental oversight.
How Parent-Managed Accounts Work
To set up the feature, parents must have both devices present, their own phone and the phone purchased for their child. During the setup process, the two devices are linked, enabling parents to manage the child’s account directly.
Once the account is activated, parents or guardians gain several controls, including the ability to:
- Decide who can contact the child’s account
- Manage which groups the child can join
- Review message requests from unknown contacts
- Adjust privacy settings for the account
These controls are protected by a parental PIN, ensuring that only the parent or guardian can change privacy settings or access management features on the child’s device.
Privacy Still a Core Feature
Despite the added parental oversight tools, WhatsApp emphasized that personal conversations remain protected by end-to-end encryption. This means messages and calls remain private and cannot be accessed by third parties, including WhatsApp itself.
Supporting Family Communication
WhatsApp says the feature was developed with input from families and safety experts, reflecting how the app is often used by families to stay connected, whether sharing important milestones, coordinating after-school plans, or simply letting loved ones know they’ve arrived home safely.
The company plans to gradually roll out parent-managed accounts over the coming months, while gathering feedback from users to further refine the feature and improve safety tools for families using the platform.
