New parental controls to personalize kids' experience on Roblox

[Roblox]

Hi Creators,

Safety underpins everything we do at Roblox, particularly the safety of our youngest users. We are continually investing in our safety systems and in 2024, we rolled out more than 40 safety updates. These included built-in protections for our youngest users, new content labels, and limiting how users younger than 13 can communicate.

Today we’re launching three new parental controls that give more parents oversight and the ability to personalize their kids’ experience on Roblox:

• Blocking their child’s friends
• Blocking specific experiences
• Viewing screen time of their child’s top experiences

These controls are in addition to what we launched last November and are now available for parents who have a child linked to their Roblox account.

Block their child’s friends

Parents can now block specific users from their child’s friend list and prevent their child from adding the blocked user as a friend again without their permission.

Parents also have the option to report anyone on that friends list if they believe that person is violating Roblox policies. Should a parent want to unblock someone, they can easily do so through Parental Controls.

Note: Children under the age of 13 cannot unblock users who their parents have blocked. They can, however, send a request to their parent or caregiver asking them to do so.

Blocking specific experiences

The Blocked experiences section of Parental Controls now allows parents to block specific experiences, and set limits on the experiences their kids interact with.

This feature is in addition to our content maturity labels, which allow parents to select the categories of content their child can access. . Children will see the list of blocked experiences in the Blocked experiences section of their settings and will be able to request parental consent to unblock a specific experience. However, they will not be able to remove items from the blocked list themselves until they are 13.

View screen time of their child’s top experiences

Parents can now view the top 20 experiences their kid has played over the last week and how long they’ve spent in each one. If parents spot any experiences they don’t want their child to access, they can block the experience, either from this list or from the Blocked Experiences section described above.

Parents should be able to decide what’s right for their kids, and we’re confident these updates will give parents the tools they need to create a safer, more personalized experience for their kids on Roblox.

Resources

To learn more about how to set up Parental Controls and what we’re doing to keep Roblox safe for users of every age, visit our help center and our Safety site.

[13_5G (Soundmoji)]

Even tho theres alot of chaos regarding safety on Roblox, this atleast improves it a bit for younger based users. The next feature should be blocking UGC Items from being visible in search because in my opinion, many accessories around the catalog aren’t appropriate for younger based users

It seems like this is more to avoid being responsible for Moderation but either way great update

[Bloxkzz]

Regarding this note, what if parents do not want their child to have the ability to remove said experiences even if they are over 13?

[Crazedbrick1]

Are there plans to focus on educating users and adults on the potential risks of online interactions?

All these controls don’t address the core problem of inappropriate content. If parents educate their children on common sense and basic internet safety, many cases of bad actors taking advantage of younger users will disappear.

I’ve been hesitant to voice my opinion that some parents and users just need to learn internet safety but screw it. Some users are simply dumb.

[idelww]

I’m kind of mixed regarding this update honestly.

I don’t know how much of a good solution this is to Roblox’ problems with experiences. I feel like there should be more action taken against the games that shouldn’t appear to users instead.

How this should be improved:

When joining Roblox, there should also be some sort of explaination of Roblox’ ToS, because many kids will skip reading the terms of use, and parent’s won’t know anything about it.
I assume there’s a lot of kids whose parents have no idea they’re playing Roblox.

There is no use to this if parents are unaware of what their kids sign up for. I would implement some small tutorial once signing up so the users can read a “tl;dr” of Roblox’s rules on the sign up page.
Parents should also be shown how to set up parental control on their child’s Roblox Account.

Issues coming with this update:

I also think that instead of having parents block games, the moderation should take action & ban games that are breaking the rules of Roblox. Some games might be affected, just because parents don’t like what their kids play (probably FPS shooters & horror games)
A lot of these games are 9+ and are purposely made to allow younger audiences to play some sort of horror game or fps shooters without extreme violence. These type of games will suffer a lot if the parents think these games are not appropriate. A lot of parents are influenced by their beliefs to ban certain stuff (such as horror) affiliating it with “the demonic” or “the paranormal”.

Conclusion:

While giving parents more control is a good step into the right direction for safety, I feel like Roblox’ priority should be deleting & moderating inappropriate content instead of giving parents the ability to block it, at the costs of also allowing to block games which follow the ToS.

I would like to see an improved moderation for experiences and know that the experiences people play are safe to play for everybody.

[kpmanaiden (Aiden)]

Honestly, in a way this is good, but whats the point? This does not address the root issue at all. The root issue comes with the platform moderation and the content that is posted on the platform. If you guys had up to date moderation half of these features wouldn’t have been necessary.

Instead of putting in resources into designing more parental controls features, shouldn’t you instead put those resources into moderation?

I mean yeah, these features are cool and all but as I just said, this does NOT address the root problem under any circumstances. Many parents aren’t even aware of most of these parental control features or don’t know what happens on the platform because they simply aren’t involved. And that is where you, the platform, should come into place to ensure nothing bad can happen on the platform itself, which you are currently not doing well.

In a nutshell, focus on moderation first, then additional features like parental controls.

[Reditect]

Roblox actually has many guides for parents here:
Families.

This is an example:

That said, Roblox could be making more easily digestible content like videos for parents.

[idelww]

Would be nice if this or something similar was shown on the signup page somewhere, because this page does not explain anything to parents about safety. while links to the terms of use and privacy policy are shown, there’s absolutely no banner or link, or something indicating to parents what they should do with their kids’ accounts, how to access parental controls or even give them a small brief of how to protect their kids.

There’s no guide or anything

[Reditect]

There’s a guide on setting up parental controls, but on the parent website. Yes, I agree though that it should totally be more known and accessible to people who sign up and use the site.

I unfortunately can’t find and don’t know any staff member on the forum who works on the parent features, making it difficult to share this.

[TheRealANDRO (ANDRO)]

Above 13, parental controls are mostly disabled, I believe.

[bobertus00 (ransomgecko)]

The first thing you should focus on is not hiding so many things from parents, it could be difficult for parents to find safety forms. So there should be a thing in your settings that you can view a summary of all the important safety things.

[Crazedbrick1]

Oh shoot I never even realized this existed. They could definitely be more visible.

[Bloxkzz]

I’m aware - I’m saying what if parents want said experiences still blocked.

[TheRealANDRO (ANDRO)]

@idelww

I also think that instead of having parents block games, the moderation should take action & ban games that are breaking the rules of Roblox. Some games might be affected, just because parents don’t like what their kids play (probably FPS shooters & horror games)

I mean, that’s already what they’re doing anyway. While moderation makes mistakes, it also removes a huge portion of ToS breaking experiences every single day. And no, parents being able to block experiences for their children is a great idea. This removes a lot of pressure from Roblox on determining which experiences should or should not exist within the platform due to Parents’ different opinions. And let’s be honest, if a Parent does not want their child to play, that child will not be able to play anyway, regardless of parental control settings.

[TheRealANDRO (ANDRO)]

Skill issue

Roblox will implement features catering to the general perspective and opinions of parents, and generally, parents don’t care to set up parental controls after 13-14 years old. If a parent still wants more control, then they should take Roblox away from the child instead.

[AVeryFancyDoctor]

Will you do anything to block avatars using UGC to create inappropriate avatars? Even with all the safety settings, a game like Natural Disaster Survival is full of inappropriate avatars.

[metatablecatmaid (metatablecat)]

This might seem like a hot take but the marketplace seriously needs to be curated for <13 users (or if a trusted guardian turns it on for 13+ users) to a small set of age appropriate accessories, well, until the moderation on that side improves.

It takes me less than 5 minutes to find not appropriate content on there, and I dont need to search it out.

[WarDevourerr (WarDevourer)]

This post is legitimately the stupidest take I’ve seen on this platform. You’re actually arguing AGAINST Roblox providing parents with tools to protect their own children. What?

Let’s gets some facts in order:

1. Parents are THE PRIMARY responsible party for what their children access online. Full stop. Roblox providing these tools doesn’t mean parents have to use them - it gives them the OPTION.
2. You’re complaining that “parents might not know about these controls” as if that’s somehow Roblox’s fault or problem. If parents can’t be bothered to learn about safety tools for platforms their kids use, that’s on THEM, not Roblox.
3. You’re literally worried that parents might block games based on their own beliefs and values. Is this not the goddamn point? Parents are SUPPOSED to decide what content is appropriate for THEIR children.

Your concern that “games might be affected just because parents don’t like what their kids play” shows a complete disconnection from reality. OF COURSE parents should have the ability to block content they don’t want their kids accessing!

Roblox is doing exactly what they should - providing tools that let parents make decisions based on their own values. The idea that this is somehow a bad thing because parents might actually use these tools to PARENT is completely backwards.

If you think Roblox shouldn’t provide these controls because some parents might use them to block content YOU think is fine, then you fundamentally misunderstand the entire concept of parental responsibility.

[AVeryFancyDoctor]

Making a system where only set avatar items appear on -13 characters and visible is actually really smart.