Telegram: Why It Is Hard to Make Safe for Children
This is a standing advisory rather than news of a change: Telegram remains poorly suited to children.
Published: 2026-03-20
What Changed
This is a standing advisory rather than news of a change: Telegram remains poorly suited to children. Users can join huge public groups and channels with minimal checks, and some of these carry explicit, drug-related or extremist content. Telegram offers no parental-control or family-supervision features, and its Secret Chats use end-to-end encryption with self-destructing messages, making those conversations effectively impossible to monitor. Telegram's own terms set a minimum age of 16, but this is not meaningfully enforced.
What to Review
- •Check whether Telegram is on your child's devices and have an open conversation about why they use it and which groups they have joined.
Parent Actions
- 1For most children under 16, safer group-messaging alternatives exist.
- 2If they do keep using it, tighten the privacy settings together: hide their phone number, restrict who can add them to groups to 'My Contacts', and enable two-step verification.
Full app guide
View the complete Telegram safety guide
This is practical educational content to support families. For case-specific concerns about a child's safety, contact the NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000 or your local safeguarding team.
Sources
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Last reviewed: 2026-03-29