WhatsApp announced in a blog post on Wednesday that it’s rolling out a new suite of parental controls to prevent teens from seeing content their parents may not want them to access.
The tools let parents choose who can see an underage user’s profile photo or invite those users to new groups. Parents can choose to receive notifications about significant group activity or changes. A similar set of controls lets parents limit how teens can use WhatsApp channels, what status updates they can see and who can see their status updates.
Parental controls are optional, and WhatsApp says they are simple to set up, requiring a single parent-set PIN. The controls can be adjusted or turned off at any time.
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Controls also extend to Meta AI on WhatsApp, the app’s built-in chatbot, which offers a default setting for those 13 and up, and a strict, limited-content setting for younger children. WhatsApp says that personal messages and calls will always remain private, even from parents.
A representative for Meta, the owner of WhatsApp, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Parental controls weave carefully around age verification
WhatsApp is threading the needle here, attempting to satisfy growing demands for child protection while also avoiding heavy-handed age verification measures that can be both costly and unpopular with privacy advocates. We’ve already seen widespread age verification laws run into trouble in places like Australia, where a recent study shows platforms aren’t requiring proof of age. While WhatsApp is rolling out age verification for some features, it isn’t enforcing a platform-wide lockdown.
Determining whether someone is underage requires collecting personal information from everyone using the platform. Today’s age verification techniques often use uploaded images of driver’s licenses and passports, along with biometric face scans, which can end up in the hands of multiple companies and government bodies. Users can also circumvent the rules by using VPN services.
We recently saw Discord try a light form of age verification using vaguely explained criteria to assign its users presumed ages. Still, the company is running into bugs that sort users into the wrong age groups, errors which, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out, disproportionately affect minorities.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, these privacy vulnerabilities and software bugs mirror the core flaws of the Kids Online Safety Act, a controversial bill currently advancing through Congress. This bill imposes various age verification requirements on online platforms while attempting to define prohibited content, which ranges from articles referencing alcohol to guides concerning sexual activity.
WhatsApp is taking a different path, offering more powerful parental controls as an alternative for worried families, potentially showing them that age-verification laws aren’t necessary.
Are parental controls safer than age verification?
The safety of parental controls depends on the user’s priorities. Technically, parental controls on phones, routers and platforms like WhatsApp can provide all the protection that age verification systems offer. Still, parents have to monitor and configure the controls themselves, adjusting the guidelines as children age.
One faction prefers to put the controls in the hands of the online platforms and the governments that regulate them, which saves them time and tough choices. Another faction views this as a dangerous risk to personal privacy and as an increase in social surveillance.
To keep track of verification laws and how they affect privacy, you can consult this online tool from the Free Speech Coalition, which tracks current age verification laws by state.
