The Very Important Details of Roblox's Big Parental Controls Update Are Here
A closer look at Roblox's long-needed new tools for following your child in Roblox.
Last month, Roblox announced a sweeping overhaul of its parental controls, but the announcement was missing important details. An overhaul, no matter how major or minor, was long overdue for the platform. You can’t, for example, engage with the parental controls, however limited they might be, without physically interacting with your child’s device. No other platform works that way, and Roblox shouldn’t, either.
Today, details are getting filled in, and Crossplay was briefed in advance. I haven’t had a chance to play with the parental controls myself, because "many" features are launching today and the rest next year, but my initial impressions are positive. I'll report back soon once I've been able to test them out with my kids and their devices.
"These changes were developed and implemented after multiple rounds of internal research," said Roblox chief safety officer Matt Kaufman this morning in a blog post announcing the changes, "including interviews, usability studies, and international surveys with parents and kids, and consultation with experts from child safety and media literacy organizations."
I recommend watching this video Roblox provided to get a sense of how it all works:
To recap, here are the major additions Roblox is making to parental controls with this:
Remote access to adjust parental control settings
This is platform security 101. Ridiculous it’s taken this long, but it’s here. This works similar to upgrading a Roblox account for "adult" experiences. You provide an ID or credit card proving that you're allowed to take responsibility for the child account.
Viewing your child’s Roblox friends list
Much like I wish YouTube would spit out a weekly report of my child’s viewing habits, it’d be nice if Roblox issued a notifications when my kid adds (or tries to add) to their list. I also wish it was possible to remove people from my kid’s friends list, but alas.
“At this time parents can’t edit their child’s friend list,” said a Roblox spokesperson to Crossplay. “As parents/caregivers can now view the list, we encourage them to talk to their children about who they are friends with on Roblox, and work with their child to edit together and remove friends from the child’s account if needed.”
Setting daily screentime limits for Roblox
You can already do this on Google and Apple devices, but hey, it’s another layer.
Children under 13 cannot direct message users outside of Roblox experiences
Important: This is coming "over the next few months."
Roblox errs on the side of chat being vital, a position I disagree with, with the company saying “connecting with others [...] core to the Roblox experience.” But in my humble opinion, chat should be disabled by default for children under 13. With my oldest, she hops on Messenger Kids and chats with friends while they play Roblox.
Experiences are getting “content labels," rather than age rankings
This makes sense. Content labels are far more important than age labels, because how each child reacts to content is going to be different. Your values might be different. That isn't going to be captured in age gating, but it might be captured in a label.
Per Roblox:
"Children develop on different timelines and, from both our own research and external research, we know that parents have different comfort levels regarding the type of content their child engages with," said Kaufman. "Labeling experiences based purely on age does not respect the diverse expectations different families have."
When a child can access these does shift based on age. Children under nine are limited to "minimal" and "mild" and can only access "moderate" with parental permission. You're allowed to toss out all these restrictions, if you feel comfortable doing so.
The video below shows you how it works. (I’m not sure if this is a platform limitation on iOS or Android, but I wish you could reply to a push notification, not an email.)
It is not possible, however, to restrict by content descriptors, i.e. “light realistic blood.”
“For simplicity, parents can limit their child’s access to experiences based on our content maturity labels (restricting access to more mature categories of games based on content maturity labels),” said a spokesperson. “At this time, parents cannot restrict access based on individual content descriptors within these categories.”
Roblox claims it's taking into account "user behavior" when it comes to determining whether an experience is age appropriate. For example, is it mostly a social space? It's a good idea, but whether it works rests on appropriate moderation on Roblox's part.
From their blog announcing the change:
"We take a more restrictive approach for our younger users and are now age-gating certain experiences for users under age 13, based on the type of user behaviors sometimes found in those experiences. These new restrictions apply to experiences primarily designed for socializing with users outside of their friends list and experiences that allow free-form writing or drawing, such as on a chalkboard or a whiteboard or with spray paint."
Roblox declined to point out specific experiences this would apply to.
Part of the reason for this is likely to give Roblox creators an opportunity to comply with the new regulations. If an experience does not have an appropriate content maturity label, then “starting in December,” according to the company, any user under the age of 13 will not even be able to search or discover the experience within Roblox.
Parents are notified 30 days in advance when a child moves up in moderation settings
I love this. Again, it comes down to the moderation settings being effective, but it's smart to inform parents changes are coming, so they can spend time considering them.
These are important, if late, changes.
Lateness is still welcomed, because Roblox isn't going anywhere. Even if your child is aging out or moving beyond Roblox, there is little indication Roblox is losing its grip on young people. This is going to be one of the primary online playgrounds of the future, and it remains important Roblox takes that responsibility deeply seriously.
Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.
Also:
Ultimately, while these controls are needed improvements, they do aren’t moderation. At the end of the day, many of Roblox’s problems are moderation.
The more I think about emailed watch history reports, the more I wish that’s actually something YouTube did for child accounts. Can someone make that?
These changes come as my four-year-old eyes Roblox, not because she cares especially about Roblox, but because she wants to do what her sister is doing.
Wild that YouTube doesn't deliver a weekly report like that. Netflix always has. It's been fun over the past year as the wife and I bet on whether it's going to be Nimona, She-Ra, or Pokemon in the number 1 spot each week.