New parental controls to personalize kids' experience on Roblox

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#21

I cant wait to prank my friends and block all the games they like

1 Like
#22

I dont know how feasible it is within the Roblox engine (it might even be impossible), but possibly Roblox could check the HumanoidDescriptions of everyone’s characters and not replicate a character if that description has non curated accessories, and replace it with a more age-appropriate avatar instead.

1 Like
#23

To be honest, they have a valid point. There’s a growing trend, especially on social media, of parents painting certain experiences as “harmful” to children, even though the said experience is not harmful in the slightest, and their child might be gotten rid of their fun time and progress if the parent decides to fall for these trends.

Though, since it’s not the majority, unfortunately Roblox can’t do anything for these types of parents.

2 Likes
#24

Not possible.

There’s tons of variables to be considered, and it would be an engineering nightmare.

1 Like
#25

The child could technically join a clone of the game they want to play, the parents should be able to hide experiences with keywords in experience name and description. The re uploads will definitely make it hard to stop kid from playing specific type of game.

It is best if Roblox knew the type of game and did its moderation correct so little parent action needed though.

1 Like
#26

What I think is stupid is having big games suffer because there’s bad actors out there breaking the rules and parents seeing horror games as demonic or even 1st person shooters (designed specially for all ages, having paintball guns & water guns) blocked because theres parents that think such things could damage their children.

If the game has been out for months and it’s 9+, made as child-friendly as possible and Roblox approved with it, it seems like there’s nothing wrong with the game.
Developers with games such as these “⚡ BIG Paintball 2! - Roblox” could lose out players because parents think that might somehow cause their child to be violent, which is not true at all.

1 Like
#27

You keep missing the point.

  1. Whether a game is “Roblox approved” or “9+” is IRRELEVANT to whether an individual parent thinks it’s appropriate for THEIR child. Roblox ratings are a baseline, not the final word.
  2. Parents have EVERY RIGHT to decide that paintball shooters or horror games aren’t appropriate for their kids, regardless of how “child-friendly” the developer tried to make them.
  3. Your concern about developers losing players because parents make choices for their children shows you fundamentally misunderstand the hierarchy here: Parents’ right to decide > Developer profit concerns.

The entire point of parental controls is to let PARENTS decide what’s appropriate based on THEIR values, not Roblox’s ratings and certainly not based on what would be good for game developers’ player counts.

6 Likes
#28

Let’s try this again: Parents have the absolute right to decide what content is appropriate for THEIR children based on THEIR values - whether you personally think those values are correct or not.

Your concern about “parents painting certain experiences as harmful even though they’re not harmful in the slightest” is completely subjective. Who are YOU to decide what’s “harmful” for someone else’s child? That’s 100% the parent’s decision to make.

The idea that children losing “fun time and progress” in a game somehow outweighs parental authority is ridiculous. If a parent decides a game isn’t appropriate, that’s the end of the discussion.

7 Likes
#29

Woah there. Didn’t completely disagree with you on that one. You can read my other replies above.

If you want to talk about having the right to criticize other people for their decisions, including parentship, then we can go to DMs. It would be off-topic. Though to give a short answer here:

You can create a short investigation determining the potentially physiologically harmful aspects of the experience or any sort of game, even outside Roblox. And evaluate the appropriate reaction towards that game. Now, the recommended way (by many professionals and professors) is to investigate thoroughly and view it objectively. So you can come to the best conclusion for your child. This is also the same for many other aspects of life, not for parentship only.

Unfortunately however, we can see many cases in media that many parents lack the capability to objectively evaluate the true aspect of a game, and can make pretty bad decisions. Because, well, they’re human. Just because you’re a parent does not mean you can’t make bad decisions.

Hit me up in DMs if you want to discuss this further. If not, well, I hope your replies do not get deleted by moderators.

2 Likes
#30

this just seems like a desperate attempt to pretend like roblox is super safe and very good for everyone
if yall want to make roblox safer, consider removing inappropriate stuff that literally everyone wants to see removed

3 Likes
#31

You’re throwing assumptions with no proof, there are plenty of parents that still have parental controls even after 13-14 years of age.

1 Like
#32

As previous comments have pointed out, moderation needs to be improved, this would probably be a huge boost to making the platform safer, as well as generally appreciated in other places on the platform.

Now the question I have is how does this really control or prevent anything? Even though I support updates like this it seems to me more like a tool to troll or lock down accounts that people should not be in control of.

I say this because:
You could always just sign up for a new account and to my knowledge you don’t have to verify your age for that.

I suppose this is just an expected thing for updates and features like this and there isn’t really an answer to my question/point but there you go.

4 Likes
#33

Good update :+1:t2: what about connecting your real account to your child’s account? So, by that, you can monitor about your child’s usage history, like what experience they are joined before, what words they say on chat, are they talking to strangers with suspicious intentions.

Its like you have a transparent information about your child’s behavior on the platform.

3 Likes
#34

This update is kinda good though. But I dont like how Roblox are making these parental control features in excuse for not having better moderation. Because they dont have enough moderators, they let the auto moderation handle it and look how it is it going. I feel like along with the parental controls should be major positive moderation improvements and changes.

1 Like
#35

And to avoid hacks, you can add authentication code for it. So by that, you dont need to switch accounts back and forth. I think this is a good one at first in general kids dont have any idea that their account is already monitored by their parents and then if they gets older and able to understand about this then thats fine. At least they know that their parents are cared with them

#36

The system would just make it so any avatar that isn’t using Roblox made accessories is turned into a bacon hair, I feel like this could be done not easily but certainly with a small team.

#37

A parent’s opinion is more important than somebody making money. If somebody feels playing games with guns will lead to violence, that’s their right.

1 Like
#38

Like how you removed the pin that locks account settings, using the parental controls as an excuse, even though it acted as a final line of defence against account login tokens being stolen or hijacked against our knowledge or control?
Bring it back please, older players (especially developers) benefit from it more than kids and parents ever will.

To add, I agree with users saying that allowing parents to block games that aren’t breaking the ToS will result in harmful beliefs harming certain experiences such as competitive games or LGBTQ hangout games (which are incredibly beneficial for people to discover their true identities without fear of hateful family or community members attacking them).

Please stop wasting resources on flawed ideas, simply hiring more moderators and having better policies and training for moderators will be vastly superior to any alternative method, such as this.

.

ALSO why the heck is tracking the time spent playing experiences exclusive to parents monitoring kids? Players have wanted such a tracking tool for probably as long as since Roblox transitioned to being a game engine and game platform rather than a block game with creation tools.
Please make tracking playtime a tool accessible to all users standalone.

1 Like
#39

“Generally” is the key word here. There are plenty of parents that still have parental controls after 13-14 years of age. But they aren’t the majority.

#40

I remember when the parental controls got first added, you had the “time spent” menu in privacy settings regardless if your a child or not. This was eventually fixed but i would’ve preferred if it stayed

If you now access the menu, it just shows blank: https://www.roblox.com/my/account#!/privacy/screentime

1 Like