You can't always control if you're added to a group chat but remind children that they can always control their own participation within it – they can leave whenever they want to. If you are added to a group with someone you have blocked, that person will still be able to contact you in the group chat. Each group is set up by one person, known as the group admin, who is the only person who can add or remove participants and change or add further group administrators.Īnybody in the group, even if they’re not one of your phone contacts, will be able to see messages that you post, and you will be able to see theirs. The group chat function allows up to 512 people to chat in one conversation stream. The main thing to discuss with them is how to act in group chats, as here people not in their contacts will be able to see all the messages and send them messages. As long as a child only has trusted people as contacts on their phone, it is a relatively safe social media app. It isn’t public in the same way that Twitter is, and people can only message friends who are already added on their phone. WhatsApp’s main purpose is to send messages to friends. Like many age restrictions on social media apps, some children may choose to ignore this and sign up for WhatsApp when they’re younger. It had previously dropped to 13 years old but in April 2018 returned to 16, as a response to data-protection legislation. In Europe and the UK, the minimum age of use for WhatsApp is 16 years old.

Whats up with whatsapp