Roblox has announced new tools to improve the safety of young users. Parents can now manage their child’s account remotely, see their child’s friends list, and set limits on playtime.
New Tools for Parents to Manage Child Accounts and Set Playtime Limits
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In the coming months, Roblox will also make changes to prevent children under 13 from messaging others directly outside of games and limit in-game interactions to public messages only. Starting today, Roblox is simplifying content labels and restricting the games and experiences children under nine can see by default.
Today’s updates are the third set of changes Roblox has announced in the past month. Earlier, Roblox introduced new rules that require parents to give permission for kids to access certain in-game chat features. They also announced a ban on social hangout experiences for children under 13 due to “user behavior that could be risky.”
Roblox’s recent changes follow a critical report last month, which highlighted examples of inappropriate and potentially illegal content being shared on the platform. The report also claimed that Roblox had not been transparent about its user activity data, a claim Roblox has since “rejected.
Roblox’s Commitment to Safety: A Statement from Chief Safety Officer Matt Kaufman
Despite the wave of changes, Roblox states that today’s announcements were the result of “multiple rounds of internal research, including interviews, usability studies, international surveys with parents and children, and consultation with experts from child safety and media literacy organisations.”
A Roblox spokesperson mentioned that these updates had already been “praised by partners, including the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) and the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI).”
“We’ve spent nearly two decades building strong safety systems, but we know there’s always more to be done,” Roblox chief safety officer Matt Kaufman said in a statement. “Last quarter saw a record average for daily active users on Roblox – over 88 million – and as our platform has grown in scale, we have always recognised that our approach to safety must evolve with it. Today’s launch represents the next stage in that evolution.”
Last month, Roblox removed a “hotdog” outfit from the game Dress To Impress after players used it to create inappropriate outfits resembling male genitalia.
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