Facebook has announced that it is raising the minimum age for users of its WhatsApp messaging service to 16 in the “European Region,” which includes all EU countries and Switzerland. The move is happening because of the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws, which go into effect next month. In order to protect children’s data privacy, the GDPR states that those under 16 cannot give their consent to their data being processed. Whether or not those under 16 will actually abide by WhatsApp’s new terms is debatable as users can presumably still just lie about their ages. The minimum age for WhatsApp users in the U.S. and most other countries will continue to be 13.
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