{"id":10281,"date":"2026-01-13T12:34:37","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T07:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hardwire.news\/?p=10281"},"modified":"2026-01-15T16:56:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T11:26:33","slug":"parental-controls-whatsapp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hardwire.news\/articles\/parental-controls-whatsapp\/","title":{"rendered":"Parental Controls Coming to Whatsapp: What You Need To Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With the growing concern over online safety for minors, social media and messaging platforms are introducing new tools to help parents protect their children. WhatsApp has now joined this effort by reportedly working on a new parental control feature that would let parents or guardians manage how children use the app.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidpolice.com\/whatsapp-parental-controls\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">AndroidPolice<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, this feature is still in development and may arrive in future updates. The proposed tools aim to give parents some oversight while keeping children\u2019s chats and calls private.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>What Parental Controls Are In Development<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">WhatsApp\u2019s new system would let parents link a primary account (the parent\u2019s) with a secondary account (the child\u2019s). This setup would let parents adjust settings for the child\u2019s account without reading their messages or calls.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here is how it is expected to work:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Parents can link a child\u2019s account to theirs.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Child accounts would have limited features and be under tighter settings by default.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Parents may control who can message or call the child.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By default, only saved contacts could contact the secondary account.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Parents could manage privacy options such as visibility of profile picture, \u201clast seen,\u201d and read receipts.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These changes aim to keep children safe from unwanted interactions while respecting end-to-end encryption.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Why This Matters For Parents And Teens<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">WhatsApp is used by billions of people worldwide and is especially popular among teens and young adults. Because the app has traditionally lacked built-in controls for minors, parents have had to rely on general privacy settings or third-party tools.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The new features could help in the following:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reducing the chances of strangers contacting minors.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Letting parents fine-tune privacy settings that children often overlook.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Preventing unknown callers from adding minors to random groups.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What\u2019s Still Unclear<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While the reports suggest these features are in testing, there is <\/span><b>no<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> official release date yet. WhatsApp has not confirmed when and where the controls will roll out or whether they will be available on both Android and iOS.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If introduced as planned, WhatsApp\u2019s parental control tools could mark a major shift in how messaging apps approach online safety for young users. By balancing privacy with supervision, the feature would give parents greater peace of mind.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the growing concern over online safety for minors, social media and messaging platforms are introducing new tools to help parents protect their children. WhatsApp has now joined this effort by reportedly working on a new parental control feature that would let parents or guardians manage how children use the app.\u00a0 According to AndroidPolice, this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":10286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardwire.news\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardwire.news\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardwire.news\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardwire.news\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardwire.news\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10281"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/hardwire.news\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10448,"href":"https:\/\/hardwire.news\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10281\/revisions\/10448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardwire.news\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardwire.news\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardwire.news\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardwire.news\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}