Roblox, the most popular online gaming site in the world, announced new age-based accounts on Monday as the company seeks to address numerous allegations of sex predators targeting children on the platform.
Roblox introduced new age-based accounts for children under 9 and for children between 9 and 15, which the company says will limit the games children can access and how they can chat with others online. The new accounts will also give parents more oversight over their children’s gaming and chat activities, according to Roblox. The new age-based accounts are set to officially launch in June.
“When they roll out in early June, these accounts will more closely align content access, communication settings, and parental controls with a user’s age. We’re also establishing an ongoing selection process for games available to users under 16,” Roblox said. “This update will bring age-checks, account-level defaults, content ratings, ongoing moderation, and expanded parental controls together into a unified framework for younger users.”
The move comes after Roblox has faced intense scrutiny over its child safety measures and has been accused of standing by as child sex predators took advantage of the game’s realistic interactive settings and chat functions to prey on children. The platform, which boasts over 80 million daily users worldwide, allows gamers to develop their own games or play games developed by other users. Roblox is especially popular among children, with the company claiming that around half of all American kids under 16 are active on the platform.
The platform’s interactive concept has exposed children to sexually explicit content, exploitation, and grooming by predatory adults, according to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who sued Roblox in November. The lawsuit alleges that Roblox has deceived parents about the safety of the game when, “In reality, Roblox is a sprawling and unregulated digital playground that is overrun by predators and saturated with sexual content.”
When the changes announced by Roblox go into effect, it will mark the first time the platform has set up specific account barriers to separate children under 16 from adult users. Parents will also be given expanded oversight of their children’s accounts, including the ability to monitor and manage chats and block specific games they don’t want their children playing.
Alleigh Marré, the executive director of the American Parents Coalition — which raises awareness about activists agendas and corporate interests influencing children — told The Daily Wire that Roblox’s move isn’t enough to address the issues on its platform. Marré argued that the age-gated accounts are just another “toolset,” not an actual fix.
“Tools without accountability don’t solve systemic problems,” Marré said. “Now, that doesn’t mean that it’s not going to help parents, but it’s just another dashboard. So, without Roblox taking some responsibility and putting some controls on the back end with teeth, it really doesn’t do anything except foist responsibility from a platform they’ve created onto parents.”
For its new age-gated system, Roblox will rely on an artificial intelligence tool that estimates the user’s age based on a photo the user uploads to the platform. Parents can also manually verify their child’s age when they sign up for a Roblox account.
Under the new guidelines, kids between the ages of 5 and 8 would only be allowed to use a “Roblox Kids” account, which would only give them access to games with “a Minimal or Mild content maturity label,” Roblox said. Under the game’s rating system, “Minimal” includes games that could “contain occasional mild violence, light unrealistic blood, and/or occasional mild fear.” “Mild” games could “contain repeated mild violence, heavy unrealistic blood, mild crude humor, and/or repeated mild fear.”
Kids under 9 would also have all online chat communications disabled by default. Parents, however, can turn on chat functions for a “Roblox Kids” account, which limits communications to “in-game chat with other users under 13-years-old” and users who are designated by parents as “trusted friends.”
Once a user turns 9-year-old, he is automatically moved up to a “Roblox Select” account, which will gives users between 9 and 15 access to a larger library of games, including games that fall under the “Moderate” maturity level. Roblox defines “Moderate” games as those which could “contain moderate violence, light realistic blood, moderate crude humor, unplayable gambling content, and/or moderate fear.”
Marré told The Daily Wire that the age-gated accounts still pose risks to children.
“When a child turns 9, they go from the entry-level Roblox to the 9- to 15-year-old bracket, which is a very wide maturity swath. You’re talking about a fourth grader with a sophomore in high school. That’s a very big difference,” Marré said. “And that’s if everybody is playing by the rules. That doesn’t stop a bad guy from creating a profile posing as a 14-year-old and reaching out to kids because now these bad guys are funneled into the ‘safe space’ for kids too.”
Users 16 and older won’t see any changes to their accounts, Roblox said.
“Together, these updates are part of our ongoing work to build age-appropriate experiences for all users, apply safety-by-default protections for younger users, and give parents more visibility and control over how their children use Roblox,” the company added.
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