WhatsApp for Under-16s: Groups and Settings to Check

WhatsApp is where many children’s friendships now happen, and most of the risk sits in two places: group chats, and who is allowed to add your child to them. Most of the protection comes from a handful of privacy settings that take about ten minutes to check. This guide covers the ones that matter most for under-16s.

Why groups are the main risk

One-to-one chats with friends are rarely the problem. The bigger concern is being added to groups by people your child doesn’t know. Those people may be strangers, or adults who have joined using a friend’s name. A group can move quickly, and your child may be shown messages, images or links they never asked to see.

Disappearing messages add a second concern. Once a message has vanished, it can’t be recovered, so there may be no record to show a school or the police if something goes wrong.

Check these settings together

Sit with your child and check these on their phone. Menu names can vary slightly between phones and app versions.

1. Open Settings, then Privacy.
2. Tap Groups and change it from Everyone to My contacts. If you need to exclude particular people, use My contacts except...
3. Tap Last seen and online and set it to My contacts.
4. Tap Profile photo and About and set both to My contacts.
5. Go to Settings, then Account, then Two-step verification, and turn it on. This stops someone taking over the account, even if they have your child’s phone number.
6. Under Privacy, check the Advanced section. If Block unknown account messages is shown, turn it on.