Roblox announces new ways for parents to control kids' gaming experience
Roblox on Monday announced new parental controls, including new ways for parents and caregivers to remotely monitor their child's gaming experience.
Using their own device, parents and caregivers can now modify how much time their child is able to play Roblox, lock down their child's private messaging options and choose the maturity level of the content their child can engage with, according to the new updates.
Roblox is also introducing a default setting that will limit users under the age of 13 to sending broadcast messages only.
With this new setting, users will only be able to send direct messages if a parent or guardian changes the default setting.
"So in a game, kids can still chat with one another in the game, but what we have turned off by default is one-to-one chat in the game experience itself," Tami Bhaumik, vice president of civility and partnerships for Roblox, told ABC News' Becky Worley in an interview that aired Monday on "Good Morning America."
To enable many of the new safety features, parents and caregivers need to make their own Roblox account and tie it to their child's account.
In announcing the new safety updates, Roblox said in a statement they were implemented after "multiple rounds of internal research, including interviews, usability studies, and international surveys with parents and kids, and consultation with experts from child safety and media literacy organizations."
The changes announced by Roblox -- which also include a new way of identifying mature content -- come after the company faced criticism from child online watchdog Common Sense Media that it can be easy for kids to see inappropriate content on the platform, including things sexual, racist, homophobic or antisemitic in nature.
According to Roblox, inappropriate content like this is against the rules and standards of the game. The company says it uses thousands of human moderators and artificial intelligence tools to police content.
"There are tens of millions of people having wonderful, positive experiences on Roblox that are safe and civil," Bhaumik said. "We take any infringement, any bad action that violates our policies very, very seriously. "
In addition to taking advantage of the newly-announced safety features on Roblox, Common Sense Media advises parents and caregivers to play with their kids on Roblox in order to understand it the game and to be able to talk to their kids about what they're seeing and experiencing.
The nonprofit watchdog group also advises parents and caregivers to keep the lines of communication with their kids open, so they feel comfortable talking to them about their online experience.
