What's Up on WhatsApp: Safer Profile Settings

As part of my teen's independent commute home on the public transport, I decided that it was time for her to own a phone, with its primary use for communication in the event of an emergency. We discussed our essential agreements and boundaries of phone ownership, and whilst no social media apps were downloaded, the prevalence of family and friends on WhatsApp meant that staying away from this messaging platform did not seem like a practical and sustainable approach. Instead, we felt that with the right settings and conversations, WhatsApp could be my teen's first insight into online social interactions and support her development of the skills and safeguards to navigate this.

With over 2.7 billion active users worldwide, WhatsApp's wide-reach has unfortunately also been capitalised upon and misused for predatory crimes and scams. In 2022, contact made by scammers to victims via WhatsApp accounted for about 56% of scam cases in Singapore.

On the level of social interactions between peers, WhatsApp as with other platforms, carries risks of cyberbullying and inappropriate content sharing. Here's what we need to know and can do to reduce these risks and safeguard our children.

1. Age Requirement

Before getting started, you should know that the age requirement for WhatsApp use is 13+.

If you live in the European region, the age restriction is 16+.

"Why 13+?" is the question I was curious about as this is the age requirement imposed on all social media and social networking platforms. If brain research now tells us that our brains only reach cognitive maturity at age 25, then why is '13' the magic number when we fully know that our children are not cognitively ready to engage with these apps.

It is solely to do with the personal data laws passed in US and the EU.

"The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in the U.S and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU are two laws designed to protect the personal information of children.

When a social network account is created for a child under 13, or when a child uses a false birthdate, these laws cannot protect their personal information from being collected and shared with third party advertisers. Bypassing these protective laws can give marketers access to the names and addresses of your children, and in many cases it allows them to observe how/where they play, what they say, and who they hang out with."

-Family Online Safety Institute, UK (2023)

Thus, even if parents feel that it is futile trying to protect data from being collected and shared (after all, how many times have we clicked on 'Accept all cookies' to proceed with accessing websites!), it is important that we as parents ponder deeply on the implications before agreeing to app downloads for our children once they are teens.

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2. Safer Profile Settings

This is a crucial step for all families to take so as to enhance your teen's privacy on WhatsApp. You will need to discuss and decide as a family what settings and degree of privacy you are comfortable with. Engage your teen in this process as the conversations around this will be invaluable. You are modelling the thought processes involved in safeguarding oneself.

Who would you be comfortable with being able to see your profile picture?

Are there benefits from limiting your 'Last Seen & Online' to just family members - in this way will you feel less pressured to reply to texts from friends if they don't have the knowledge of when you were last online?

These prompt questions support your child in understanding of the privacy features and knows how to work with you to toggle the settings in the event that they feel they need more specific limits to allow them more 'breathing space' and privacy from their peers. Rather than waiting for your child to pick up this knowledge and figures out how to 'block' you from seeing their status updates, start on the right foot by having these safer settings conversations with them early on.

WhatsApp's default setting on privacy is essentially 'no privacy' as the 'Everyone' setting allows all users to see your profile photo, status and about. Therefore, minimally, families should change the privacy settings from this default.

A quick Google Search will take you to many step-by-step guides such as this 'WhatsApp Controls & Settings' guide by internetmatters.org.

As a family, discuss and consider the right settings for your teen. Here are some thought processes that I went through as a parent that you may find helpful as well:

• Balancing privacy versus having an access point for us parents - For example, my daughter has the habit of sending me a quick text 'I'm on my way home" after school. On days whereby her text is late, I can have a look at her 'Last Seen & Online' and if it still reflects that she was last online in the morning before school started (phone usage is not allowed during school hours), this gives me the assurance that she is still at school with possibly a slightly later dismissal than usual. It can be the smallest habits as such, but it becomes an additional safeguard. Hence, this naturally formed an aspect of our family conversations when we discussed mutually-agreed comfort levels of privacy without negating safeguarding.

• Selecting privacy features that work best for your child and your family at that point time, whilst equipping your child with the knowledge that these settings should be dynamic and responsive to their needs - In the same privacy section, to reduce your teen's pressure from replying to texts, you can turn off 'Read Receipts' which means that the sender would not know if their messages have been read or not. However, do note that it works both ways and your teen would also not be able to know if messages are being read as well. We had not adopted this within our family as the main function of the phone and my daughter having WhatsApp is the ability to contact us in an emergency and knowing that the messages have been sent and received. Thus, it often isn't about blindly turning all the privacy settings on, but rather intentionally discussing and selecting the level of privacy that works best for your family at that time.

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3. Location sharing

Draw your teen's attention to the Live Location feature, which allows for real-time live location to be shared in individual or group chats. Whilst this may be a helpful feature used when establishing meeting points or ETA, there are further safeguards that they can put in place when sharing their live location.

• How long will the live location be shared - 15 minutes, 1 hour, 8 hours? 15 minutes should be sufficient!

• Ability to stop live location sharing at any time.

• When sharing live location within a group chat, all members within the group will be able to access this information. As such and if possible, avoid sharing it within group chats.

• After the live location sharing is stopped or expired, be aware that the recipient(s) will see your shared location as a static thumbnail image of your last shared location.

Safer settings and features for Group Chat invitations, 'View Once' and 'End-to-end encryption' will be explored further in Part Two: Navigating Chat Dynamics.

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References

1. Family Online Safety Institute (2023) - Three reasons social media age restriction matter

2. internetmatters.org (2023) - 'WhatsApp Controls & Settings' guide

3. National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC 2023) Is WhatsApp safe for my child?

For details and clarifications on the features of WhatsApp, you can visit their FAQ website with step-by-step guide to change the features.