Roblox will begin restricting children from communicating with adult and significantly older teen strangers starting next month, a move introduced as the platform faces a new wave of lawsuits accusing it of enabling predators to target children as young as seven, reports Baltimore Chronicle, with reference to the original publication by The Guardian. The company announced that the updated communication rules will rely on facial age estimation, which will determine whether a child may interact with other users outside their immediate age range.
Roblox, which now reaches about 150 million daily active players and hosts viral titles such as Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot, has recently been confronted with legal actions claiming that its system architecture allegedly made young users vulnerable to grooming attempts. According to the company, it will become the first major gaming or communication platform to enforce age-verification mechanisms specifically for chat access. Similar requirements were introduced in the UK for pornography websites this summer under the Online Safety Act.
The updated age-segmented system, compared by Roblox to educational cohorts—elementary, middle school and high school—will initially roll out in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands. In those countries, children who do not personally know an adult in real life will be blocked from messaging them beginning next month, followed by a global rollout in early January. All users will be grouped by estimated age: under 9, 9–12, 13–15, 16–17, 18–20 and 21+. A child whose estimated age is 12, for example, will be permitted to correspond only with users under 16. Roblox emphasized that images or videos provided for age checks will not be stored.
Chief safety officer Matt Kaufman stated that the system is intended to strengthen user trust and make interactions safer, adding that the changes represent an opportunity to reinforce confidence in the platform. The policy shift comes amid multiple lawsuits from families alleging “systemic predation of minors” within Roblox. Florida attorney Matt Dolman, who has filed 28 cases against the company, said that the core accusations center on widespread grooming risks facilitated by insufficient user screening.
One recently filed lawsuit in the US District Court of Nevada involves a 13-year-old girl whose family claims Roblox operated “recklessly and deceptively,” enabling circumstances that led to her sexual exploitation. The complaint alleges she was contacted by an adult predator posing as a child, who manipulated her into sharing her phone number and later coerced her into sending explicit images and videos. The filing argues that proper identity and age-verification procedures could have prevented the abuse.
Two additional lawsuits submitted in the Northern District of California relate to a seven-year-old from Philadelphia and a 12-year-old from Texas, both of whom were allegedly groomed on the platform and persuaded to produce explicit content. A Roblox spokesperson said the company is “deeply troubled by any incident that endangers any user” and underscored that the safety of the community remains a priority.
The spokesperson noted that Roblox imposes stricter policies than many comparable platforms, including limited chat functions for younger users, a prohibition on user-to-user image transfers and filtering systems that block attempts to share personal data. They also highlighted that the company acknowledges its systems are not flawless and is working continuously to enhance safety features, launching 145 new initiatives this year.
Kaufman added that safeguarding children online requires a broader industry effort and expressed hope that other platforms will adopt similar protective standards. Beeban Kidron, founder of the UK-based 5Rights Foundation, welcomed the shift but emphasized that gaming companies must prioritize children’s safety at the core of their services. She described Roblox’s claim of setting a sector-wide benchmark as ambitious, noting the company’s slow reaction to predatory behavior in earlier years, but expressed hope that the new measures will prove effective.
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