What Parents Should Know About the Big Changes to How Children Will Be Chatting in Roblox
Soon, everyone on Roblox be asked to verify their age and will, in theory, only chat with other people in and around their age. In the future, they might only play with them, too.
In early 2026, participating in Roblox chat will require verifying your age.
Roblox “experience chat” is a big deal and goes alongside “direct chat” within anything you’re playing on Roblox. It’s where a lot of communication happens between players, especially if you’re playing a game like Adopt Me, where you might want to swap items, or a game like 99 Nights in the Forest, where you might want to talk strategy on survival. Chat—both “experience” and “direct”—is turned off by default for any Roblox player under nine years old, but a parent can override that restriction.
“Experience chat” is everyone playing. “Direct chat” is a private message. In a given game, everyone playing is in “experience chat.” This news impacts every aspect of chat, and will begin limiting who you can and can’t talk to based on age buckets.
(There is also “party chat,” where you can jump between experiences as a group. That is off by default for anyone who is under 13. All “chat” is off for anyone under nine.)
P.S. Yes, I’m aware of the disastrous New York Times interview with the head of Roblox. I’m going to give that interview time to sink in before I comment on it. let’s circle back to everything going on there after the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.
Right now, it’s possible to submit to a voluntary age check. Next month, it will become a requirement in parts of the world. Early next year, it’s everywhere. You do not have to share a selfie (or ID) with Roblox if you don’t want to, but if you sidestep the age verification process, there’s no way to flip on chat in Roblox. That’s just gone.
Once verified, the technology drops players into different age buckets:
Under 9
9-12
13-15
16-171
8-20
21+
Some reasonable questions you might have at this point:
“Won’t kids just find a way to trick this system?”
Almost certainly, and I’ll be keeping an eye on how they pull it off, but…
“The Facial Age Estimation process is designed with anti-spoofing detection to prevent this kind of fraud,” said a Roblox spokesperson.” It requires a live video and is built with technology to prevent users from using spoofs (e.g., a static picture, a video of someone else, or a significantly different face). Roblox may periodically re-check a user’s age if fraud is suspected.”
“What if the automated system puts you into the wrong age group by accident?”
“Our vendor Persona’s technology has been extensively tested and certified by third-party laboratories and has achieved superior results for face matching, liveness, and age assurance,” said a spokesperson. “Persona’s age estimation models achieved an Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 1.4 years for minors under 18 based on testing by the Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS) in UK. [Also] the user will have an opportunity to correct their age by using a government ID or their parent can correct their age using their parent linked account.”
Once again, we’ll know more (and what loopholes exist) when the system rolls out.
To understand how this all works, let’s use my nine-year-old as an example.
Her chat—both “experience” and “direct”—is off because I made that choice through Roblox’s parental controls, and it’s become a point of conversation, now that my daughter is playing games where the lack of chat is causing frustration for her.
Here’s what I said earlier this month after she tried to convince me to flip it back on:
“But it was one of those conversations with your kid where you walk away from it going ‘well, they had a good point, and in a few years, I’ll probably admit that.’ It wasn’t enough to move the goal post on access—she’s going to have to live with not accurately communicating with other players for now—but she did have a point.”
In this system, she’d be dropped into the “9-12” bucket, which means she would only chat with other children in the “9-12” bucket and what Roblox calls “similar age groups, as appropriate.” According to Roblox, she can chat with anyone in the “9-12” bucket, the older “13-15” bucket,” and the “under 9” bucket. With someone who’s 18 years old, they’re in the “18-20” bucket can could talk to the group below them (the “16-17” bucket) and above them (the “21+” bucket). A person in the “21+” bucket can only talk to other folks in the “21+” bucket and those in the “18-20” bucket. Got it?
With my kid, it wouldn’t mean they’re only be playing with others in the “9-12” bucket. It means they can only communicate with folks in these age-appropriate buckets.
“The new system applies only to chat, not to gameplay,” said a Roblox spokesperson. “Users will still be able to join experiences with people outside their age range. That said, we are updating our gameplay matchmaking on Roblox to introduce a new tool that helps group users of similar ages together.”
That seems like a positive change! Kids…should…play with kids their age? Will it be optional?) It stands to reason it could cut down on predatory encounters, and might sway me towards unlocking chat for my daughter. “Might” being the operative word.
(A small request: much like how parents can do one-time approvals for a child playing a Roblox experience at a higher maturity level, make that an option for chat, too.)
There are curious limitations. A parent cannot currently chat with a child who’s under 13. The company says it will “soon roll out dedicated solutions for direct chat between parents and children younger than 13 or between siblings in different age groups.”
Slowly, then all at once, we’ve now moved into a world where it’s normal to share a photo with a website to prove you are who you say you are—or here, what age you are.
But Patrick, you ask, isn’t this a security nightmare? Discord moved to this world, and it’s already spilled people’s IDs and other information all over the internet. Wonderful.
“We designed the Facial Age Estimation process to protect privacy,” said the company in announcing the news. “Images and video are deleted immediately after processing.”
In the same way we’ve all gotten used to learning yet another one of our passwords has leaked, we are probably (and regrettably) moving towards a world where that also means photos of ourselves are going to leak onto the internet regularly, too.
Much like that classic Mad Men meme: “not great, Bob.”
Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.
Also:
You should definitely read the Roblox interview in The New York Times. It only validates many suspicions people have about the company and those leading it.
I do think many people at Roblox want Roblox to be a better place. It’s not clear the people leading Roblox, combined with its scale, can truly make that happen.
The main criticism of Roblox that it’s much like a social network, caring about moderation only as it hurts its ability to scale, is underscored in that interview.
OK, I guess I ended up commenting not that interview. But I want to sit with it a little bit longer and see what the fallout is before I end up digging in deeper here.