Updated 12 January 2026 at 22:19 IST
WhatsApp’s Upcoming Feature May Let Users Control Their Kids’ Chats
WhatsApp is working on a feature that will allow parents to control the accounts of their children, alongside their privacy settings.
WhatsApp may soon offer users parental controls, allowing them to decide who their kids chat with and what they share during conversations. Called “Primary Controls,” the new privacy tool is currently in testing, with a new report suggesting that the Meta-owned chat app will introduce limitations to its services for minors.
A screenshot shared by WABetaInfo, “Primary Controls” is described as a tool that lets you “view activity and choose settings for secondary account.” The “Secondary account” is essentially your kid’s account with limited features. Some of these limitations, such as visibility of the secondary account owner’s last seen and online activity, profile picture, ‘About’ description, read receipts, calls, messages, and privacy settings, are controlled by the primary account.
According to the report, the child’s account will be connected to the parent’s account through a dedicated link while keeping the secondary account’s messages and calls private. These controls, the report said, provide parents with essential tools to supervise their child’s account without access to their personal conversations.
Parents can also prevent interactions between their child and strangers or unknown users by enabling these controls. Primary account owners can also restrict secondary account users from being added to unknown group chats. In doing so, some of the child’s activities will be shared with parents, but their conversations will remain end-to-end encrypted.
Since the functionality is currently in development, it is not even available to beta testers. As such, information on when these privacy controls will be rolled out to the general public is unclear.
Published By : Shubham Verma
Published On: 12 January 2026 at 22:19 IST