Roblox gives parents more oversight amid child safety concerns

The fast-growing children's gaming platform Roblox is handing parents greater oversight of their children's activity and restricting the youngest users from more violent, crude and scary content after warnings about child grooming, exploitation and sharing of indecent images.

- Robert Booth

From this week, parents can access a Roblox dashboard on their own phones showing who their children are interacting with and how long they spend on Roblox each day, and allowing them to check that their children's ages are accurately recorded. The platform is restricting users under nine to games rated "mild", with access to "moderate" content allowed only with parental approval. Mild content may involve "unrealistic blood or unrealistic violence", while depictions of blood would look realistic in games rated moderate. Preteens are also being blocked from chat functions outside games as part of a global tightening of rules on what is one ofthe most visited online destinations among British eight- to 12-year-olds, after Google, Meta's Instagram and Facebook, and Tik Tok. The moves come after an investor last month alleged it had found child sexual abuse content, sex games, Violent content and abusive speech on the site.