Roblox is getting a lot safer for kids of all ages

Key Takeaways

• Roblox is introducing new parental controls to enhance child safety, including limiting direct messaging for users under 13 and implementing a content rating system.
• The platform is moving away from age-based categories to content levels (Minimal, Mild, Moderate, Restricted) and offering age-gated experiences.
• Parents will have access to a wider range of controls, such as remote account management, time limits, and friend list visibility, with full implementation expected by Q1 2025.

Roblox, an online gaming and game-making platform, is a tour de force in the gaming world, especially for kids. It has a whopping 79.5 million daily users, with 56% of those being under 16 years of age — and a whopping 82% under 25 years of age. As with any platform catered to children, there are a lot of protective guidelines in place. Today, Roblox announced that even more tools are on the way that will give parents more granular control over what their children are exposed to while playing the game.

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Players under 13 years of age won't be able to directly message other users outside of games, and they will also be limited to public broadcast messages only. While parents can change the settings if they choose to, by default, users younger than 13 won't be able to message anyone, according to an official blog post from Matt Kaufman, Roblox's CSO. The game is also reworking its content labels. While games were once divided by age, Roblox is now separating titles by "Minimal, Mild, Moderate, and Restricted" content levels. There will also be age-gated experiences and settings, too. Finally, parents are getting more controls including remote account management, the ability to link parent-child accounts, and more.

Source: Roblox.com

Parents will also be able to set time limits that will automatically restrict access after a certain amount of gameplay. Other features in the Parental Controls dashboard also lets parents see their kids' friend list. Many of the updates are going live today, but others will be rolled out gradually. Roblox says it hopes to have all of its planned improvements implemented by Q1 2025.

Roblox has faced scrutiny before

Companies know Roblox is the way to reach kids. Even Google jumped aboard in September when it released Be Internet Awesome World, a Roblox game focused on teaching children about internet privacy and security. Unfortunately, predators have also caught on. A Bloomberg story from July dove into the odd and unsettling behavior of many of Roblox's older users, as well as more than 13,000 reported instances of child exploitation. This story wasn't the first time someone criticized the online platform for failing its younger users. Many of the recent changes have been spurred forward due to those critiques, and Roblox promises to continue and apply improvements and updates to keep children safe.

Roblox says the new settings and features are in place to better protect children, not to restrict them. As children age, their accounts will automatically release certain gated content. Parents and children will be notified of any changes 30 days before they take effect, and parents can choose whether to allow access to that content or not.