After a string of child safety lawsuits, Roblox is age-checking everyone who wants to chat with other users

After a string of lawsuits from families whose children were preyed upon on Roblox, as well as concerned state Attorneys General, the platform is introducing automated age verification that will prevent child and teen users from speaking to anyone outside their immediate age group.

Well, sort of.

Roblox has been under close scrutiny over the last few months, both over the multiple child safety lawsuits and over its decision to permaban Schlep, a YouTuber who was conducting predator hunts on Roblox that he claimed resulted in six potential abusers being arrested and charged. Schlep and hunting partner JiDion both criticized Roblox’s alleged lack of action against accounts they reported for child abuse; meanwhile, the platform threatened to sue Schlep if he made another account and continued “simulating” child endangerment.

In the wake of backlash against the Schlep ban, Roblox reiterated that it has an age verification system, first introduced in 2023, that would require users to send in videos of their faces, and sometimes also provide government IDs, to prove they’re age 18 or older. This system doesn’t allow people with unverified ages to access games or spaces that have “private” locations like bedrooms and bathrooms, nor virtual bars or clubs.

Now Roblox is tightening things further–and focusing on the chat function.

Starting now, any Roblox user who wants to access its communication features must what it calls the “Facial Age Estimation process.” That means going through a short face-recording age check powered by Persona–a company that says its facial recognition tech is based on ethical AI, and claims that it offers “the most performant core models across capture devices and demographics based on evaluations by the US Department of Homeland Security.”

Following the age check, Roblox will sort the user into one of six age groups: under 9, 9-12, 13-15, 16-18, 18-20, and 21+.

Now, according to Roblox, users will only be able to chat with people who are in their same age bucket “and similar age groups, as appropriate.”

But the examples it gives are confusing. In one fake scenario, it presents “Elisa,” a user whose estimated age is 12. That should put her in the 9-12 age group. But Roblox says it would allow her to chat with anyone up to age 15; only users age 16 and above are prevented from chatting with her.

In another scenario, “Marcus,” estimated to be 18, is allowed to chat with 16-year-old users, and could add a “Trusted Connection”–a sibling, for example–that’s as young as 13. (Trusted Connections is a system allowing for adults and kids who know each other IRL to interact on Roblox, because “[w]e recognize the importance of family members playing, learning, and communicating directly with their child on Roblox,” per the platform.)

Obviously in a real-life situation like high school, 18- and 16-year-olds interact without issues all the time, but in the wilds of the internet, it’s curious that Roblox is allowing adults to interact with kids at all.

“We see [this system] as a way for our users to have more trust in who the other people they are talking with are in these games,” Matt Kaufman, Roblox’s Chief Safety Officer, said in a statement. “And so we see it as a real opportunity to build confidence in the platform and build confidence amongst our users.”

Roblox will begin enforcing the verify-your-age-to-chat system in the first week of December in “select markets,” including Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands (which, coincidentally, are the regions introducing more stringent laws to protect kids on social media). That same enforcement will begin in the U.S. in January, Roblox tells Tubefilter.

“Early next year, we will also require age checks to access social media links on user profiles, communities and experience details pages. This will strengthen our current policy, which already limits access to self-declared 13 or older users,” Roblox said. “This supports our vision of keeping users on Roblox, where our approach to safe communication includes multiple layers of protection.”

(Worth noting: A number of lawsuits against Roblox also list chat platform Discord as a defendant, since predators often find kids on Roblox, then urge them off-site to chat on Discord.)

Will this system be effective? Beeban Kidron, longtime children’s digital rights/safety advocate and founder of the UK nonprofit 5Rights Foundation, told The Guardian that Roblox’s claims about this system are “a bold assertion from a company that has been slow to address predatory behavior and has allowed adult strangers, and older children, easy access to millions of younger users.”

She noted that Roblox believes this system will “set best practices for the [gaming] sector.

“I hope they are right,” she said.