Roblox announces new child-safety rules and here’s all you need to know

• Popular online game Roblox has announced new child-safety rules. 
• It is taking steps to protect young players and give parents more control as well. 
• Children aged 13 and under will require parental permission to access certain features. 

Roblox has announced a range of new child-safety measures aimed at giving parents more control. The popular online video game will give adults more ways to dictate how their kids can use it. 

It includes new types of accounts which will allow parents or guardians to oversee who their kids are talking to in the game. Users who are aged 13 or under will also require permission from adults to access certain features in the game. 

Roblox has begun to send an email to users explaining the new features. Here’s all you need to know: 

Parent privileges

In an email to users, Roblox said: “Next month, we’re changing the way parents manage their child’s experience on Roblox by introducing Roblox accounts with parent privileges. After linking your account to your child’s, parents can view and update parental controls for their child all from their own device. Parents also get access to insights about their child’s Roblox usage, such as their daily screen time and on-platform friends.”

Parents will no longer be able to set a parent PIN, use Account Restrictions, or receive account-related notifications to their parental email from next month (November). Instead, they will need to use an account with parent privileges. 

Existing verified parental emails on child accounts will continue to be used for account recovery. Any settings previously set using a parent PIN will not change, but you will need an account with parent privileges to make updates going forward.

As always, if users are interested in an added layer of security on their account, you can set up 2-factor authentication.

Updated content maturity settings

In its email to users, Roblox added: “As we shared with the community in July, to help provide parents and users more clarity into the types of content available on Roblox, we’ll soon begin labelling experiences based on the type of content users can expect in an experience, rather than by age.” 

Experience Guidelines will be renamed Content Labels, and you’ll be able to set limits on the type of content accessible to your child through the content maturity setting in parental controls.

New default settings for users under the age of 13

As part of Roblox’s commitment to safety, the game is also updating certain default settings for our youngest users. Starting next month, users under the age of 13 will need parent permission to access certain chat features. 

Users under the age of 9 will also need parent permission to access experiences with content maturity “Moderate,” which may contain things like moderate violence or moderate crude humour.

Roblox explained in an email: “Your child’s settings will be updated when they reach certain ages, if you and your child haven’t previously made changes to them. You and your child will be notified of these updates in advance. We will share more information on these setting updates when the changes go into effect next month.” 

What else do parents’ need to know? 

In the email to users, Roblox said: “To continue receiving notifications about your child’s account related to spending or other important activity, you’ll need to set up a Roblox account with parent privileges and link to your child’s account. 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.

“Since day one, Roblox has been committed to building safety features and tools into the design of our products. We will always continue to explore different ways to update our parental controls to make them even more useful for parents.”

What do you think of the new child-safety protocols on Roblox? Share your thoughts by emailing me: [email protected].