Social Media
How WhatsApp Works for Kids
WhatsApp is a messaging app that looks simple and mostly is. The messages are fully encrypted, so nobody outside the chat can see them, and it's built around big group chats that can pull in people your kid has never met.
Why this matters for your kid
Because WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, not even WhatsApp can read what gets sent. That's great for privacy, and it also means there's nobody else watching out for your kid in there. Anybody with their number can message them, and one group invite can drop them into a chat with dozens of strangers.
What it's like for your kid
For a lot of kids, WhatsApp is just how they talk to friends or family, especially relatives in other countries, and that part's fine. Where it gets messy is the big groups, where messages fly by, things get forwarded around, and disappearing messages and photos that can only be opened once make it easy to send something without leaving a trace.
The setting to change tonight
Turn off the setting that lets anybody add them to groups, and talk about what they'll do when a stranger messages them or a group gets weird, which is leave and tell you. The encryption is good for privacy, and it also means nobody in WhatsApp is watching out for them, so what keeps your kid safe is knowing what to do.
The Sunday Script
Get one script every Sunday
The words for one hard conversation, in your inbox every Sunday, and a short note once a month. You can stop anytime.
That email doesn’t look right.