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Roblox is boosting safety features for young people. It's a step in the right direction. Roblox has announced significant changes to its gaming platform to enhance safety for children under 16. The announcement comes just days after a man in the United Kingdom was jailed for 28 months for "obsessively grooming" a 14-year-old girl he met on the platform. It also comes after the Australian government put Roblox on notice in February over ongoing concerns about online child grooming. So what are the new safety features? And will they help keep kids safe online? What are the changes? Roblox is a massive virtual gaming universe which allows users to create, play and share games with others, globally. It has more than 150 million daily users and hosts more than 44 million user-created games. The new safety features will start in May in Australia (and June, globally). They're designed to build on features the company introduced last year, including age assurance checks, making accounts private by default, and grouping users of similar ages. Don't let yourself be misled. Understand issues with help from experts The company will introduce two new, age-based accounts: Roblox Kids for 5 to 8-year-olds and Roblox Select for 9 to 15-year-olds. The accounts will have distinct background colours so parents can easily see what account their child is using. Users will be allocated to age-appropriate accounts through Roblox's facial age estimation checks or via parental controls. Roblox Kids and Select accounts share several features. These include having the chat function set to "off" by default in Australia (though chat will be "on" by default for Select accounts in most other regions). While Australian Select accounts will gradually introduce chat for older children, both accounts will have parental controls to manage chat and block access to specific games for children under 13. Once children turn 16 they will transition to Roblox's standard accounts. Successful age checks are crucial. In January, Roblox announced it would require age checks for users to access chat. It will now strengthen its approach to user age checks, using the same technology. Access to content will be limited to a selection of minimal and mild-rated content, and with chat turned off, until age checks are complete. Roblox says it will continuously monitor accuracy and require additional checks where player behaviour is inconsistent with the user's registered age. Parents will be able to correct a child's age where needed. * Developer verification requires content creators to either complete a formal ID verification or maintain links to a parent's account, use two-factor authentication, and maintain an active, paid subscription to the new Roblox Plus accounts. * Real-time evaluation involves a real-time multimodal moderation system assessment to compare game content with Roblox's rules, followed by gameplay by users over 16 to provide feedback and data on how people play the game before it's made available to younger users. * Content eligibility where only content rated "minimal" or "mild" will be available in Roblox Kids, with "moderate" content introduced for older children in Roblox Select accounts. Any content tagged as "restricted" (for example, content that has graphic and realistic-looking depictions of violence or sexual themes) will only be available on Roblox's full platform, for users 18 and older. Changes to game classification. Roblox will also replace current content maturity labels with country-specific content labels under the International Age Rating Coalition. In Australia, the platform will use the Australian Classification Ratings. This harmonisation is designed to make it easier for parents to identify age-appropriate content, using Australia's current advisory ratings. The new Roblox accounts are designed for children under 16. So they would exclude R18+ games, which will only be available to users 18 and older. However, if games rated MA15+ are available on Select accounts, parents could decide to allow access for 15-year-olds. Positive changes with some caveats. Roblox's new account features and ratings are welcome. But they show parents must be actively involved in managing children's accounts, including enabling chat and assessing age-appropriateness of game content and features. For example, the games and features included in each account will vary by region. So children may ask parents to add games to their accounts that are not included by default. Parents may find age discrepancies between ratings when assessing games available in other countries. In the United States, for example, ratings include "Teen" (13 and older) and "Mature17+" (17 and older) that do not align easily with Australia's PG, M, and MA15+ ratings. This means parents will need to carefully assess whether games are age-appropriate. It's also unclear if turning on the chat function in the new accounts in Australia will restrict chatting to others within the same age group, or whether parents can extend chat access to "trusted connections" in both accounts. Currently, Roblox allows children under 12 to choose trusted friends, with parental approval. But children aged 13-17 can accept a friend request, directly. Creating trusted connections is not yet available in all countries. Even where it is, parents must always be extremely cautious when allowing children to chat with other people. The inability of age assurance technologies to restrict social media accounts for as many as seven in ten children under 16 - due to age estimation errors and people's ability to circumvent age checks - shows significant technical challenges. Digital duty of care is needed. While some parents believe gaming apps such as Roblox should be included under Australia's social media ban, the introduction of digital duty of care legislation is a better approach. This would require technology companies to take steps to prevent foreseeable online harms - as Roblox is doing with their new accounts - and hold companies accountable for content and system design. The government introduced, and later paused, digital duty of care legislation in 2024. But Minister for Communications Annika Wells has pledged the government will bring this to parliament this year.

Roblox introduces mandatory age-gated account tiers. Let kids be kids, and tweens be select. Senior Editor Mon, April 13, 2026 at 5:15 AM PDT Roblox is preparing to roll out its biggest change since starting age verification late last year. While that program was initially focused on chat access, today's news is about age-segregating the games on the massive platform. Starting in mid-May, users will be pushed into one of three worlds: Roblox Kids, Roblox Select or Roblox. The exact age ranges of these groups will vary by territory, but in the US they are 5-8 for Kids, 9-15 for Select and 16+ for the regular account. These three account types then align with the platform's current content maturity labels, which divide games into Minimal, Mild, Moderate and Restricted. Kids accounts will be the most restricted, with chat off by default and only Minimal and Mild experiences available. Ages 9-15 get to chat with kids in their age group and "trusted friends" that have passed the parent test, and will be able to access Moderate content as well as games for babies. At 16, teens will automatically be moved to a full-fat Roblox account with all of its features, but not all of the games. Content marked as Restricted will only unlock once they turn 18. Roblox says over half of its users are now age checked, whether through ID verification or face scans. With the new account types rolled out globally - which the company says should be done by June - it'll start forcing users who haven't completed an age check into a Kids-like experience, with no access to chat or games rated higher than Mild. Once age verification is completed, Roblox still faces the task of ensuring that its vast collection of user-created content is actually age-appropriate. Its solution to this is, of course, ID verification, AI and upcharges. Developers will have to verify their identity and pony up $5 a month for Roblox Plus to show "a long-term commitment to the platform." The wisdom is that, with these hurdles cleared, a developer will surely apply the correct maturity label to their games. On the off-chance that an experience is mislabeled, Roblox's AI moderation will keep tabs on game instances to make sure what's happening on-screen and in-chat matches the maturity label. On the surface, this does leave a gap where a toddler could end up playing an incorrectly labeled mature game before the AI catches it. Don't fret, though, as Roblox says users over 16 "play new games first," which surely isn't an overgeneralization and will ensure that no child ever plays a mature game. Roblox also previewed a pair of new parental control features coming in June. First, parents will be able to block any game and manage direct chat access until a child turns 16. Previously, kids over 13 could unblock experiences by themselves. Second, parents will be able to approve games outside of their child's age bracket on a case-by-case basis. Roblox gave an example of a younger child wanting to play a game with their older sibling for this feature's utility. Of course, the big blocky elephant in the room is the efficacy of automated age verification. Reporting from Wired in January suggested even enterprising toddlers might be able to get past the platform's age checks, which somewhat undermines everything Roblox is trying to achieve. Speaking to press ahead of today's announcement, Roblox Chief Safety Officer Matt Kaufman said, "If we get it wrong... we offer users multiple ways to correct that." He added that the platform is "constantly measuring users' behavior and comparing that against what their age-check data says. If we see those things divert, then we will just ask people to run through the age process again."

Roblox is introducing new account types to provide age-appropriate access to games and chat, the company announced on Monday. The changes, rolling out globally in early June, follow mandatory age checks implemented in January. Users aged five to nine will receive "Roblox Kids" accounts with access to games rated "Minimal" or "Mild" and chat disabled by default. Users aged nine to 15 will get "Roblox Select" accounts with access to "Moderate" content and age-restricted chat. Standard accounts remain for users 16 and older, whilst "Restricted Content" requires users to be 18-plus. Games available to younger users must pass three-step screening: developer verification, real-time evaluation by users aged 16-plus, and multimodal moderation. Parents can approve specific games outside default restrictions. The move follows lawsuits from Louisiana and Texas attorneys general over child safety concerns.