In an effort to improve safety, Roblox is introducing stricter restrictions for younger users’ accounts and overhauling its parental control options. These changes come after damaging reports regarding the company’s safety practices and at a time when the industry as a whole is reassessing the impact of online platforms on children.
For starters, Roblox is simplifying the process for parents to set up and adjust their parental controls. With these changes, parents will be able to monitor their kids’ Roblox activity and settings directly from their own devices.
Video credit – Roblox
Previously, parents had to adjust settings directly on their child’s device to manage Roblox’s parental controls. However, with the new updates, parents will now get push notifications whenever their child requests approval for actions, such as joining experiences with a higher maturity rating. They will also have the ability to track screen time and set daily usage limits, after which the app will be locked.Speaking of maturity ratings, the platform is also making changes to how it categorizes content, aiming for clearer guidance for parents. The Experience Guidelines will now be called Content Labels, and instead of tagging experiences by age, they’ll be classified by the type of content users can expect. This shift should help parents make more informed choices about what’s suitable for their children.
Roblox is also tightening restrictions on how its youngest users can interact with others. In the coming months, kids under 13 will no longer be able to send private messages to other users outside of certain games or experiences. While they’ll still be able to view public messages within games, sending messages to others will require parental consent.
All these updates reflect Roblox’s ongoing efforts to improve safety, and I think the company is heading in the right direction. Ensuring children’s safety on platforms like Roblox (and online in general) is crucial, so it’s good to see the company stepping up. In a similar vein, Instagram has also rolled out new safety features aimed at protecting teens on the platform.
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