JACKSOVNILLE, Fla. — The popular children’s gaming platform ROBLOX rolled out a new safety feature meant to ensure that children playing the game interact with other kids their own age. Roblox wants to block adults from interacting with children online.
“We do not let our kids play ROBLOX,” Amanda Lazarus said.
Amanda Lazarus is one of several local parents we spoke with who already prevent their kids from playing ROBLOX.
The free popular online gaming platform has 151 million daily users. Kids are able to play starting at the age of five, but most of those users, about two-thirds of them, are people over the age of 13, according to ROBLOX.
“We’re pretty careful of what we let our kids do on the internet,” Lazarus said.
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This other parent said her 9-year-old played ROBLOX all the time. But her child is no longer allowed to play after she saw a video on Facebook that shows a man explaining how others have used the game to interact with minors.
“It opens a door for anybody to have contact with your child,” another mother said.
In order to prevent inappropriate contacts on its platform, ROBLOX rolled out a new global security feature. It uses your child’s facial ID to verify their age, which allows them to chat with other kids in the same age range. That’s according to Tami Bhaumik,Vice president with ROBLOX. They have also rolled out a safety center website for parents. The new feature will allow parents to see who their children’s close friends are.
“We want to make sure that we’re limiting contact between minors and adults that they don’t know. So focusing on kids in, you know, two-to-three-year age bands, Tami Bhaumik, vice president of civility & partnerships at ROBLOX, said.
For now, the safety feature is an option but starting in January those children 13 and older will need to go through the age estimation or id verification process to use the chat function.
For now, the safety feature is an option, but starting in January, those children 13 and older will need to go through the age estimation or ID verification process to use the chat function.
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“The technology that we’re using is we’re very confident in. We’re using a third party called Persona, and they have high accuracy. We’ve done a lot of testing with them,” Bhaumik said.
Roblox says the third party won’t store the child’s picture. It will be deleted after verification. They say parents can opt the child out of this verification process, but they will need to show an ID as well as provide a child’s birth certificate to use the chat process.
“We’re very excited to announce our new age-based chat requirements. Roblox is the first platform to require a quick private age check for anyone to use any of our communication systems, such as chat. And we really believe that it’s going to set the bar on online safety, and it’s the gold standard. You know, we have always been, we’ve always prioritized safety and civility on the platform because we know we have younger kids,” Bhaumik said.
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