The update lets guardians manage settings via PIN as new Brazilian digital rules take effect.
Meta introduced new parental controls on WhatsApp for teenagers' accounts in Brazil on Wednesday, September 30, 2026. The tools allow parents and guardians to manage settings such as profile photo visibility and which numbers can add teens to groups, using a PIN for approval. Teenagers' calls and personal messages will remain private.
The update also provides alerts when a teen joins or leaves a group, or when a group grows significantly. Guardians can manage channel usage, regulate 24-hour status posts, and adjust the Meta AI assistant to make it more restrictive with limited content access for users over 13. The tools arrive as Brazil's ECA Digital rules entered into force, with mandatory enforcement of parental control requirements set to begin in 2027.
The release comes one month after Meta agreed to pay a 16.68 billion dollar fine, roughly 87 billion Brazilian reais, to settle a lawsuit alleging its apps caused addiction among teenagers.
And this is just the beginning. We are developing these controls based on the needs families express to us, step by step. All these controls are being developed to support open conversations about how to use WhatsApp between parents or guardians and teens, while keeping everyone's personal messages private.
Fabro Steibel, executive director of the non-profit ITS-Rio, noted that while the new tools help parents, they do not remove the platform's duty to conduct proper moderation alongside parental and state oversight.
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