WhatsApp is rolling out new parental controls that let guardians keep tabs on who their teens interact with and decide what kind of content they can access in Meta AI chats. Because if there's one thing teenagers love, it's a digital leash.

With these controls, parents can limit how teens use channels, whose Status they can see, and who can see their Status updates. Guardians can also control who can add teens to groups or who can see their profile picture. And for the truly helicopter-inclined, parents can get a notification when a teen joins a new group, leaves one, or when the group size grows to 30, 100, or 250 members. Yes, you'll know the exact moment your kid's meme group crosses the 100-person threshold.

All these settings are locked behind a PIN set by parents, so if a teen wants to change anything, they'll need parental approval - a digital version of asking to borrow the car keys. Guardians can also turn the controls off completely, presumably when they decide to trust their offspring.

Beyond group and status snooping, parents can set content settings for Meta AI. There's now an option to choose the default 13+ setting or a stricter 'Limited Content' option that disables private processing-based features like incognito chat and message summaries. Because nothing says 'safe' like knowing your teen can't have a private conversation with an AI.

WhatsApp insists that despite these new controls, messages and calls remain end-to-end encrypted, and no one - not even Big Meta - can see them. So parents, you can monitor who they talk to, but not what they say. Small mercies.

Meta has been on the receiving end of several lawsuits accusing its social media products of harming children. Lawmakers have pressed Meta and Instagram specifically on delays in launching teen safety features. In August, the company agreed to pay a hefty $18 billion fine to settle a lawsuit brought by 29 states. That's billion with a B, and states with an S.

The company has been aggressive in introducing child-protection features across its apps. This year alone, it's rolled out movie rating-inspired content controls, launched parental controls for interactions with Meta AI, added pre-teen accounts on WhatsApp, and started alerting parents if their children search for self-harm content on Instagram. So while parents get a new set of digital training wheels, Meta gets to say it's doing something - again.