How old do you have to be to use WhatsApp? 13, in Europe since 2024, and the AI comes with it

In plenty of parent group chats the number 16 is still doing the rounds, and it is not made up: for years, that is exactly what WhatsApp's European terms said. But the number changed, and the question that matters in 2026 is no longer just how old a child has to be, but what kind of account sits behind the name. Because now there are two.

The rule: 13, or older if your country says so

WhatsApp's terms for the European Economic Area say you must be at least 13, or whatever higher age your country requires, to use the service on your own. The version of those same terms dated 4 January 2021 said 16 for anyone living in the European Region; the revision of February 2024 says 13, and for the UK WhatsApp itself dated the change from 16 to 13 to 11 April 2024, giving the reason that it wanted one consistent minimum age worldwide. What WhatsApp does not publish on its minimum-age page is a list of countries with a higher limit: if one applies where you live, you will not find it there. And on that same page there is a second sentence that changes the conversation: anyone under the minimum age can ask a parent or guardian to create a parent-managed account for them, if it is available in their country.

• Who it is for: children under 13 (or under the higher age the country requires). An adult aged 18 or over sets it up, with both phones side by side, scanning a QR code from the adult's phone.
• What it does not have: Meta AI, Channels, Status, Chat Lock, App Lock, linked devices, location sharing, view once messages or disappearing messages in one-to-one chats. No ads either.
• Who can message the child: by default, saved contacts only. Messages and group invites from unknown numbers go to a requests folder the adult approves, and only the adult can add the child to groups.
• What the adult cannot see: the content of the messages. They stay end-to-end encrypted; the adult gets activity alerts, such as a new contact or a pending request.
• The lock: a six-digit PIN that only the adult knows and that is needed to change any setting.
• The end: at 13, the adult receives a notification to move the account to a standard one, with every feature, Meta AI included, and no parental controls.
• The small print: WhatsApp announced it on 11 March 2026, is rolling it out gradually and warns that it may not be available in your region yet.

Compared with the others

Here WhatsApp is the exception, not the rule. Most of the services we have checked in this series offer no legal route below their minimum age: Claude is 18 with no exceptions, Gemini depends on the country and ChatGPT wants parental permission up to 18. Meta AI, the assistant that lives inside WhatsApp, has its own article with its own check date, and the steps for pushing it out of the way on a child's phone with a standard account are in the article on removing Meta AI from WhatsApp. Every number, service by service, is in the open register of minimum ages.

What this means at home

There is a legal route and there is a trick, and it helps to tell them apart. The legal route, if your child is under 13 and the feature has reached your country, is the managed account: messages and calls with the people you approve, and nothing else. The trick is the old one, a false year of birth: WhatsApp calls that a violation of its terms, and the same goes for an adult who registers an account on behalf of a child who is too young. And there is a detail many parents do not factor in: as soon as a standard account meets the minimum age, Meta AI is inside it without anyone installing a thing. If your eleven-year-old has WhatsApp today on the usual account, they do not have the version without AI. They have the adult one.

And if they are already using it

They probably are, because the class group was created in September and nobody asked anyone's age. The useful move is not deleting the account at nine in the evening, it is sitting down together and choosing. If they are under 13 and the managed account already exists in your country, switch to that one, set up from scratch with the adult alongside. If they are 13 or over, go through three things in the chat list together: who can message them, which groups they are in, and what that contact called Meta AI is that nobody added. We have written separately about class group chat rules and about the checklist before the first smartphone.