Roblox Adding Parental Controls, Will Require Permissions for Young Players

Popular online game platform Roblox is addressing underage access and making changes to parental controls, amid news investigations about predators targeting children on the platform and a class-action lawsuit over gambling in some of its games. The company behind Roblox has sent an email to parents outlining the changes it's making, which include the following:

Parents will be required to grant permission for users under 13 to access some chat features, and for users under 9 to play games with moderate violence or crude humor. They'll also be able to link a Roblox account with parent privileges to their child's account, to access and change their parental controls and to monitor activity on Roblox, including daily screen time and friends on the platform. Account-related information about a child's account, such as spending details, will no longer be sent to a parent's email address; they'll have to access that through the linked parental Roblox account.

Roblox sent a copy of the email to CNET, and a spokesperson said, "The updates that were shared via email are part of Roblox's commitment to making the platform one of the safest online environments for our users, particularly the youngest users." 

Roblox hasn't officially announced these changes outside of that email, which was was reported on earlier by Bloomberg, but the company told parents that the changes will roll out sometime in November. 

In the message to parents, Roblox said, "When these changes take effect, your child will receive a notification inviting them to add a linked parent account, and we'll send you an email with instructions."

In July, Roblox began changing the way game content is labeled on the platform, adding more description about its content rather than labeling it by the age for which it's appropriate. At the time, Roblox told game developers, "This change was prompted by user feedback and the recognition that all children develop on different timelines, so labeling experiences based on age does not meet every family's needs." 

That change was also mentioned in the email to parents.

Criticisms about Roblox's platform and underage users echoes larger shifts in parental concerns about the effects of social media on young users and the dangers for underage users involving online gambling sites.

Meta recently announced big changes to accounts for teenagers on Instagram. TikTok introduced a Youth Council earlier this year in an attempt to make the platform safer for younger users. This all came after a Pew Research study last year found that 81 percent of adults surveyed favored parental controls for minors using social media. 

Roblox has about 80 million active daily users, and according to Bloomberg's investigation, about 40 percent of those users are under the age of 13.

Recently, Roblox has been expanding into VR. The game already has a presence on Quest headsets, and it added virtual avatars to chat and incorporated generative AI elements to help creators who make content for the platform.