Roblox has introduced new child safety tools aimed at protecting teens on its platform, including a new age verification system, an overhaul to the friends list, and more.
As revealed in a news post on the Roblox website, the platform’s new tools are aimed at “advancing [its] safety and civility vision”; Roblox describes the tools as “an expansion of [its] safety platform” and “a significant step forward” in terms of its user experience.
First up, the new Trusted Connections system, which will depend on Roblox‘s age verification estimation (more on which in a moment), will allow users aged 13 or over who know each other in real life to connect and talk “without filters”.
Roblox users aged between 13 and 17 can add each other as Trusted Connections through age verification, and if they want to add users aged 18 or over, they’ll have to do so via Trusted Connections. Those under 13 can’t use this new system.
The new age verification system will work via “age estimation technology” that will require users to “take a video selfie”, then submit it to Roblox. That selfie will be “analyzed against a large and diverse dataset” to estimate users’ age, and data is “handled securely”, according to Roblox.
If the system can’t verify a user’s age, they won’t be able to access Trusted Connections, so Roblox‘s system is erring on the side of caution with this one, it seems. Real-life connections between users, i.e. Trusted Connections, will be determined “through a QR code or phone contact list”.
As well as these new systems, Roblox is also introducing new additions to its privacy and wellbeing tools, like new online status controls, a new Do Not Disturb mode to block notifications, and insights for screen time, among other things.
User safety (and particularly child safety) has been a hot topic for Roblox in recent years. In November, following a Bloomberg report confirming new tools were on the way, Roblox introduced sweeping changes to its parental controls and safety systems.
These changes were almost certainly made, at least in part, in response to a third-party report condemning Roblox as an “X-rated pedophile hellscape”, and in response to the platform’s developers cutting trust and safety spending on 2024 amid widespread concerns about child safety and exploitation.
Despite all of this, Roblox‘s Q1 revenue in 2025 was up 29% compared to the year prior, as were the platform’s “average monthly unique payers” (that’s “payers”, not “players”). It seems concerns about safety aren’t enough to drag people away from Roblox, even after its many controversies.
