WhatsApp will raise its minimum age from 13 to 16 in the EU

Facebook’s raising WhatsApp’s minimum age to 16 in Europe, as the company prepares to iron its shirt ahead the forthcoming instalment of the General Data Protection Regulation.

At present, teenagers as young as 13 can sign up to use the messaging service, in similar vein to Facebook’s other properties. It’s not clear if the company’s will review its minimum age on its other services too.

Nevertheless, new users signing into WhatsApp will be asked to confirm their age.

It’ll be interesting to see just how, or if, WhatsApp and Facebook will enforce this, considering that little information is shared on the chat app.

But that might be a thing of the past.

“We are not currently sharing account information to improve your product and ads experience on Facebook,” WhatsApp writes in an update.

“As we have said in the past, we want to work closer with other Facebook companies in the future and we will keep you updated as we develop our plans.”

Those within the ages of 13 to 15 still using the app will need to get a parent of guardian of age to sign off on information sharing on the service.

And for everyone else, you’ll soon be able to download your WhatsApp data in a similar fashion to Facebook’s “Download Your Information” feature.

“In the coming weeks, you will be able to download and see the limited data that we collect. This feature will be rolling out to all users around the world on the newest version of the app,” the company concludes.

Feature image: Memeburn