Roblox has today announced further tools designed to improve the safety of its young audience, including the ability for parents to remotely manage their child’s account, view their child’s friends list and limit the amount of time made available to play.
In the coming months, further changes will be made to stop children under 13 from directly messaging others outside of games, and limit interactions within games to public messages only. Starting today, Roblox is also simplifying its content labels and limiting the games and experiences children under nine can see on the platform by default.
Today’s announcements mark yet a third set of changes detailed by Roblox in the past month. Previously-announced policy tweaks were revealed to now require parental access to be given for children to access some in-game chat features. This was followed by the announcement of a ban on social hangout experiences for kids under 13 due to “user behaviour that can potentially pose a risk”.
Roblox has long been criticised for not doing enough to ensure the safety of its enormous audience, the majority of which are kids. This summer, a Bloomberg report revealed that Roblox itself had reported 13,316 instances of child exploitation in 2023, and that more than two dozen people had been arrested for abusing minors following contact in-game.