Roblox has disabled the Direct Message (DM) feature for users under 13 years of age and implemented other major security changes amid child safety concerns.
Roblox has announced major adjustments to its security measures for children under the age of 13, new regulations intending to limit children’s ability to send DMs to any other users while also updating parental control for Roblox.
In a new blog post, the Roblox team unveiled a whole slew of security changes in the hopes they are able to “facilitate” the connectivity of Roblox with “safety in mind.”
The biggest change coming to Roblox is that users under the age of 13 will “no longer be able to directly message others on Roblox outside of games or experiences.”
Therefore, children will still be able to communicate within games but will not be able to engage in platform chat at all. However, these settings can be changed via the Parental Controls options if consenting adults so choose.
Alongside these new restrictions, Roblox has completely overhauled its content rating system, categorizing the type of content in the game into four distinct categories.
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- Minimal: May contain occasional mild violence, light unrealistic blood, and/or mild occasional fear.
- Mild: May contain repeated mild violence, heavy unrealistic blood, mild crude humor, and/or repeated mild fear.
- Moderate: May contain moderate violence, light realistic blood, moderate crude humor, unplayable gambling content, and/or moderate feat.
- Restricted: May contain strong violence, heavy realistic blood, moderate crude humor, romantic themes, unplayable gambling content, the presence of alcohol, strong language, and/or moderate fear.
As per the new blog post, users under nine years of age will only have access to minimal or mild content by default and can only access moderate content with parental consent. These age-based content restrictions will “automatically update as they move from one age group to another.”
Stephen Balkam, CEO of Family Online Safet Institute (FOSI) explained, “By empowering parents with new controls that allow them to oversee their child’s activity in a flexible, meaningful way, Roblox is taking significant steps toward building a safer digital environment.”
This overhaul in security measures from Roblox comes after a recent Bloomberg report broke down the prevalence of child predators on the platform.
This report, coupled with Hindenburg Research’s own that outlined the dangers children face on Roblox, in which they claimed the platform is a “pedophile hellscape,” has caused major concerns regarding the platform’s security measures.
However, these new security measures respond to the recent scrutiny the platform has been under regarding protecting its young users. All these new changes are expected to be fully rolled out by the first quarter of 2025.
