Roblox Rolls Out Even More Protections for Kids as Concerns Persist

Gaming platform Roblox is popular with young kids, but investigations from law enforcement and news organizations have found worrisome cases of predators using Roblox to target children, along with a lawsuit alleging illegal gambling on the platform. These growing concerns over child safety are part of why Roblox has been rolling out a series of updates with new protections for its youngest and most vulnerable users, including age gates, screen time limits and new parental controls.

Roblox first announced it was rolling out a set of parental controls in October, and now, parents will be able to manage their kids’ accounts from their own devices and accounts. Within these controls, parents can set daily screen time limits and view their kids’ friends list. Parents will need to link their Roblox account with their kids’ account. New content labels, based on content and not age, will help parents understand the different elements — violence, crude language and so on — in different games or experiences. Players under 9 years old will be automatically limited to games that have minimal or mild levels of these elements, but parents will also be able to manually select what label their kids are able to see and play.

New age gates will also be put in place to limit younger gamers’ ability to chat with other users. Gamers under 13 years old will only be able to chat with other players in games or experiences, as direct messaging abilities outside of those will be disabled. There will also be a new default setting in games that limit these younger users to public broadcast messages only.

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Earlier this month, the company introduced new changes that kids under 13 years old won’t be able to access social hangout elements in games, which Roblox said includes “vibe games, clubs, socializing and supportive spaces where the primary theme or purpose of the experience is to communicate (e.g. in text or voice chat) with other users as yourself.” It also prevents young gamers from accessing free-form creation tools. Gamers under the age of 13 won’t be able to access these interactive features in games starting Monday, Nov. 18. These restrictions do not include roleplaying games or real-life simulations, which let a gamer adopt another character or identity.

Roblox is also changing its default to prevent gamers under 13 from accessing unrated games. The company says that games without these ratings — usually indicating the level of violence, gore and other sensitive content — will not be searchable or playable for players under 13. Developers will have until Dec. 3 to fill out a questionnaire for each experience they want to be accessible to players under 13 and to let Roblox know what kind of experience they offer so a rating can be given. Creators who don’t fill out the questionnaire will have their experiences labeled as unrated and will then be unplayable for preteens.