WhatsApp launches new parental controls for teens in India: What parents can control and how to set them up?

"WhatsApp on Wednesday, September 30, launched new controls for parents to keep track of who their children are connecting with on the instant messaging platform. WhatsApp launches new parental controls for teens in India The new suite of tools is for those parents and teenagers who want to have a choice in their WhatsApp user experience. It is an optional tool for parents to choose specific privacy settings on WhatsApp Teen Accounts, such as who can see the teen user"s profile photo or add them to groups. Moreover, parents can choose to be notified when their teen joins or leaves a group, or when a group their teen is in adds new members, without reading the private chats.Advertisment Add Startup Pedia As A Trusted Source They will further be able to choose how their teenager can use Channels, whose Status updates they can see, and who can see theirs. "Today we're introducing parental controls for teens - a set of flexible, optional tools that parents and teens can set up together to help families choose the WhatsApp experience that's right for them," the company shared in a statement. It also provides control over who can see the teen"s profile photo and who can add them to groups. If a teenager wants to change some of these settings to allow more people to interact with them, their parent"s approval may be required through a parent-set PIN. Incidentally, the teen-focused safety protections are also available in Meta AI, with an option for parents to choose between the default 13+ setting and a stricter "Limited Content" option. WhatsApp"s new announcement comes as governments around the world move to ban or restrict children"s access to social media in response to growing concerns over social media addiction and the online safety of minors. “We"re building these controls step by step, based on what families tell us they need. 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,” the Meta-owned app said in a blog post. WhatsApp has kept the setup process quite simple. Parents need to enter a single PIN to start getting alerts and being in the loop. Notably, it does not affect WhatsApp"s end-to-end encryption. The teen"s personal messages and calls remain private and inaccessible to anyone outside of the chat, including WhatsApp. In March this year, WhatsApp launched new parent-managed accounts for under-13 users. To set up these accounts, the user needs to be under 13 years of age or the minimum age required in their country to use the platform. Meanwhile, the parent or guardian must be at least 18 or older. The new parent-managed accounts are available on devices that have the latest version of WhatsApp for iPhone or Android. Also read: “This guy is a monster & nobody knows him,” says Donald Trump about Sundar Pichai; “Yep, nobody knows,” react netizens"