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.
According to AndroidPolice, this feature is still in development and may arrive in future updates. The proposed tools aim to give parents some oversight while keeping children’s chats and calls private.
What Parental Controls Are In Development
WhatsApp’s new system would let parents link a primary account (the parent’s) with a secondary account (the child’s). This setup would let parents adjust settings for the child’s account without reading their messages or calls. Here is how it is expected to work:
- Parents can link a child’s account to theirs.
- Child accounts would have limited features and be under tighter settings by default.
- Parents may control who can message or call the child.
- By default, only saved contacts could contact the secondary account.
- Parents could manage privacy options such as visibility of profile picture, “last seen,” and read receipts.
These changes aim to keep children safe from unwanted interactions while respecting end-to-end encryption.
Why This Matters For Parents And Teens
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.
The new features could help in the following:
- Reducing the chances of strangers contacting minors.
- Letting parents fine-tune privacy settings that children often overlook.
- Preventing unknown callers from adding minors to random groups.
What’s Still Unclear
While the reports suggest these features are in testing, there is no 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.
If introduced as planned, WhatsApp’s 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.
