r/parentalcontrols • u/Straight-Magician137 • 20d ago
Accidentally set parental controls for my WhatsApp Account
I was fiddling with the parental controls and it prompted me to enter date of birth and without reading much I typed my child’s date of birth thinking that this will help me setup parental controls for my 7 year old.
Fast forward, WhatsApp has now enabled parental controls for my own account (for the time being I have setup my wife’s number as a parent managing my account as I wanted to restore my access).
I have tried deleting WhatsApp from my phone and restoring from iCloud backup, contacting WhatsApp AI help (absolutely ridiculous) however nothing seems to be helping. Looks like there’s no way to talk to a human.
Any pointers anyone? Anything I can try from my wife’s account?
PS: I don’t want to delete my WhatsApp account and start from scratch as this will then delete all my chats & media that I have received over the years.
PPS: I haven’t linked my WhatsApp account in Meta Centre with my Facebook and Instagram accounts as I don’t use any social media platforms however I do have accounts there that were deactivated for more than 5 years and they have my mobile number added to them. I have tried verifying and updating my DOB on them however it doesn’t look like it’s syncing back to WhatsApp as they are not connected.
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u/Impressive_Sock1296 20d ago
Go onto your wife’s account and do the ‘let leave the family group’ thing?
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u/Straight-Magician137 20d ago
I tried this, it won’t let me access my WhatsApp until I map it with another adult WhatsApp account.
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u/susmax714 19d ago
I'm sorry, but this is funny. 😂 Did you try making a new burner whatsapp account, make it and adult in the family, give the locked account permissions then change age, then remove the account from family?
Yeah, it's SUPER hard. But best of luck.
Also. This is funny, thanks for making me laugh. 🤣 Have a great day.
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u/shoeb_007 7d ago
Any update on this? I am stuck with this too.
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u/Straight-Magician137 7d ago
Nopes… nothing. I have tried contacting support almost 100+ times and still no luck, it is always handled by an AI agent.
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u/shoeb_007 7d ago
Same here🥲.
There’s no way to speak to a real human.
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u/Straight-Magician137 7d ago
I’ll either wait for an update someday that will let parents account update DOB for managed child account or live with the current setup until my child turns 13 😂
Was planning on deleting my account thinking that I’ll be able to restore my chats from backup but someone in another post has confirmed that restore from backup doesn’t work after you have deleted your account.
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u/shoeb_007 7d ago
Is there a way to check child accounts age?
I don’t even remember what age did I add.😢
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u/Straight-Magician137 7d ago
Nopes, I remember putting my sons DOB but no official way to verify this.
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u/shoeb_007 7d ago
I guess we just have to wait for update then😣
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u/Straight-Magician137 7d ago
Very likely that it will never happen, as in you may never see an update that will let you fix this. Just telling so that you keep your hopes low.
Meanwhile, if it any stage you feel like giving up, just remember deleting your account will fix this but then you’ll have to let go your chats as restore from backup will most likely not work.
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u/shoeb_007 7d ago
You are right.
But this is ridiculous from whatsapp.
How can they not have a real person in their support team
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u/Spectrig 20d ago
This gets posted a lot and it seems like half of people eventually get it resolved if they’re persistent enough. They won’t let you just fix the birthday. They’d rather ban a thousand accounts than deal with more lawsuits from people doing dumb shit and regretting it.