Roblox restricts DMs for children under 13 and tightens parental controls for safety push

Roblox is adding accounts for minors and updating its parental control features as part of a push to strengthen security features on its site. The changes come after damaging reports about the company’s security practices and amid wider industry scrutiny of the internet’s impact on children.

Now, Roblox severely limits the ability of its youngest users to interact with others on its service. The company plans in the “next few months” to block all children under the age of 13 from sending private messages to other users outside of certain games or experiences. The company will continue to allow minors to see publicly broadcast messages within games and experiences, but they will not be able to message other users without parental consent.

Additional restrictions follow a previous review where the company is under 13 years old from accessing certain types of experiences. This includes the unrated experience, as well as “Social Hangouts and a free-form Creative User Experience.”

Roblox also makes it easy for parents to set and adjust parental control preferences. With the changes, some of them passed Bloombergparents will be able to monitor their children’s Roblox usage and settings using their devices. Previously, Roblox’s parental control features required parents to make changes to their children’s device. Now, parents are able to receive an app notification when their children seek permission for certain actions such as joining activities at a higher growth rate. Parents will also be able to keep tabs on their children’s screen time statistics and set daily limits, after which the app will be inaccessible.

The changes are Roblox’s latest attempt to address security concerns about its service. A in the middle Bloomberg business week Earlier this year it described what it described as Roblox’s “childbed problem,” noting that “since 2018, US police have arrested at least a dozen people suspected of abducting or abusing victims they met or trained using Roblox.” Hindenburg Research, a well-known short-selling firm, also recently published a report accusing Roblox of failing to protect children from predators.