Revolutionizing Digital Connection: Roblox’s Vision for Age-Based Communication

Safety has always been foundational to everything we do at Roblox. Our goal is to lead the world in safety and civility for online gaming. We’ve spent nearly two decades building sophisticated safety systems, which supports our mission of connecting a billion people every day with optimism and civility.

We are dedicated to supporting experiences that are both deeply engaging and empowering for players of all ages, while continuously innovating how all users connect and interact. Today, we’re taking a significant step forward and announcing an expansion of our safety platform.

This includes:

• Trusted Connections: We’re empowering users 13 and older to connect and chat more freely with people they know and trust, fostering positive interactions. We're also introducing a new standard for communication between teens and users 18+.

• Age Estimation: We’re investing in age estimation technology to help confirm users’ ages. At launch, Age Estimation will unlock Trusted Connections.

• Privacy Tools: To help promote their well-being, Roblox users will now have more ways to manage notifications, screen time, and privacy. This functionality will be available to all, but designed with teens in mind.

• Insights for Parents of Teens: We’re offering parents of teens new tools for transparency into their teen’s Roblox experience, such as spend notifications, Connections and Trusted Connections insights, and screen time stats. This complements existing parental tools for users under 13.

Introducing Trusted Connections

Users on Roblox connect with people they know in real life, as well as players they meet in Roblox experiences. To better reflect how our users connect and interact, we’re renaming Friends to Connections across our platform. And building on this, we’re introducing Trusted Connections for eligible users 13 and older. Trusted Connections can be unlocked through Age Estimation, and users who are connected through Trusted Connections can communicate more freely in chat and voice with people they know and trust. This additional freedom to chat more openly with trusted connections reduces the incentive for teens to move interactions off platform, where they may be exposed to greater risk.

Key Benefits of Trusted Connections

• Communicate Openly: When users 13 and over add each other as Trusted Connections, they unlock a more open and engaging communication experience. This includes Party voice and text chat without filters, giving them greater freedom to coordinate and plan their in-game experiences.

• Connect With People They Know and Trust: Users 13 to 17 who have their age confirmed can add each other as a Trusted Connection. In addition, teens (13 to 17) can only add users 18+ who they know in real life as Trusted Connections, through a QR scan or Contact Importer. This provides additional safeguards between people who have met on platform, but who are further apart in age.

• Proactive Monitoring: Even with greater communication freedom, all conversations on Roblox, including those between Trusted Connections, remain proactively monitored for critical harm (e.g., grooming) to provide a safe and positive experience.

Users younger than 13 will not have access to Trusted Connections, and, unlike many other platforms, we continue to block the sharing of any personal information while filtering inappropriate content and monitoring all communication. In addition, Roblox does not support sharing photos or videos in chat regardless of age.

Trusted Connections With Age Estimation: Setting the Bar for Safety and Civility With Age-Based Communication

We believe chat without filters should only be accessible to users who have verified their age. This isn’t just about compliance; it’s about building engaging and appropriate digital spaces for everyone.

To support this vision, we’re investing in age estimation technology that enables more tailored and developmentally appropriate experiences, while protecting our community from those who might seek to do harm.

Age Estimation is a prerequisite for Trusted Connections. Looking ahead, we envision using Age Estimation platform-wide to support user access to age-appropriate features and content. Users always have a choice: Age Estimation is optional, and those over 13 can still verify with an ID and, in the future, verified parental consent. We believe this represents a significant leap forward for online safety and hope other platforms follow suit.

How it works:

• Users 13 and over who want to access Trusted Connections will be prompted to take a video selfie, which is analyzed against a large and diverse dataset to estimate their age. All biometric data is handled securely.

• Users must receive an estimation of at least 13 years old to access Trusted Connections and other chat functions that are restricted to users 13 and older.

• Unfiltered communication between users aged 18 and above and those 13 to 17 is blocked unless a preexisting, real-life relationship exists, confirmed through a QR code or phone contact list. We will soon provide more ways for age-checked teens to connect with each other on Roblox.

• If our estimation system determines that a user is actually under 13, we will automatically correct the user’s age to under 13 and remove access to features that are not age appropriate.

• If the system is not able to estimate the user’s age with high confidence, then the user’s age will remain unconfirmed and the user won’t be able to access Trusted Connections. If the user doesn’t pass Age Estimation but is over 13, then they can confirm their age through ID verification and, in the future, verified parental consent.

With Trusted Connections and Age Estimation, we enable greater freedom and flexibility for users 13 and older when communicating with people they know and trust —while still protecting interactions with users they don’t know as well.

Cultivating Positive Digital Habits: Supporting Teens’ Online Well-being

Teens are natural explorers, navigating the online world with a desire for autonomy and freedom. At Roblox, we balance this independence with safety and well-being. Today we are introducing a new suite of tools that are available to all, but designed specifically to empower teens to confidently manage their digital lives.

Our initiatives are shaped by valuable partners, including Roblox’s Teen Council, our Trust and Safety Advisory Board, the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Family Online Safety Institute.

These new additions to our privacy and well-being tools help teens set healthy boundaries—from managing screen time and silencing notifications for better focus, to curating their online presence to feel comfortable and secure in who can see they are online.

Here’s what we are announcing:

• Online Status Controls: Users can decide who sees whether they’re online: just their Connections, their followers, no one, or everyone on Roblox.

• Do Not Disturb Mode: Users can now set a window during which push notifications from Roblox are silenced to help with focus or sleep.

• Screen-Time Insights and Controls: Teens can now see how long they are spending on Roblox and where they are spending the most time. Teens now also have access to a new control that allows them to set a daily limit on time spent on Roblox.

We believe in empowering teens to manage their digital lives with support from parents and the safety systems built into Roblox.

Empowering Parents of Teens With New Insights

We’re always enhancing our tools, and last year we introduced expanded parental controls for parents of users aged 13 and under. Now, we’re extending this commitment globally to empower parents of teens with a suite of transparency tools. Today more than ever, parents navigate complex digital lives alongside their busy schedules. We’ve engineered this new functionality to provide clear, intuitive insights, offering parents a deeper and more confident understanding of their teen’s evolving Roblox world. This marks a continuing commitment to being the safest and most civil online platform possible for every family.

With teen’s permission, parents can now set up a linked Roblox account to gain visibility into:

• Trusted Connections and Connection Insights: Parents can view who their teen is connected to, both as Connections and Trusted Connections.

• Screen-Time Insights: Parents can now see how much time their teen spends on Roblox and in which experiences.

• Spending Notifications: Parents can now choose to receive notifications whenever their teen makes a transaction on Roblox or receive high-spending alerts.

Today’s announcement marks an important step forward, as we build on our existing safety systems with investments in advanced machine learning with AI, content moderation, and comprehensive parental controls. The launch of Trusted Connections with Age Estimation, new privacy tools, and parental insights for parents of teens builds on our existing safety systems to deliver industry-leading, age-informed communication that redefines digital safety and civility.