Roblox is boosting safety features for young people. It’s a step in the right direction |
Roblox has announced significant changes to its gaming platform to enhance safety for children under 16.
The announcement comes just days after a man in the United Kingdom was jailed for 28 months for “obsessively grooming” a 14-year-old girl he met on the platform.
It also comes after the Australian government put Roblox on notice in February over ongoing concerns about online child grooming.
So what are the new safety features? And will they help keep kids safe online?
What are the changes?
Roblox is a massive virtual gaming universe which allows users to create, play and share games with others, globally. It has more than 150 million daily users and hosts more than 44 million user-created games.
The new safety features will start in May in Australia (and June, globally). They’re designed to build on features the company introduced last year, including age assurance checks, making accounts private by default, and grouping users of similar ages.
The company will introduce two new, age-based accounts: Roblox Kids for 5 to 8-year-olds and Roblox Select for 9 to 15-year-olds.
The accounts will have distinct background colours so parents can easily see what account their child is using. Users will be allocated to age-appropriate accounts through Roblox’s facial age estimation checks or via parental controls.
Roblox Kids and Select accounts share several features. These include having the chat function set to “off” by default in Australia (though chat will be “on” by default for Select accounts in most other regions).
While Australian Select accounts will gradually introduce chat for older children, both accounts will have parental controls to manage chat and block access to specific games for children under 13.
Once children turn........