Roblox has started rolling out facial age checks as a requirement for all users who want to access communication features.
Announced September 3, the tech allows the company to implement age-based chat, where the facial age checks are designed to screen players and limit communication between minors and adults.
Roblox is an immersive gaming platform and a creation platform with more than 151 million people coming every day from as many as 180 different countries. A small percentage of them create the experiences that everyone else plays. One of those games this summer had more than 25 million people playing it at the same time.
Two-thirds of the players are over 13. Roblox will become the first online platform to require facial age checks to access chat, establishing a new industry benchmark for safety.
Starting today, all users can now voluntarily go through the Facial Age Estimation process to secure access to communication features. Roblox is doing this as part of its ongoing safety efforts, but it also knows that parents of children who have been harmed are holding its heat to the fire. They’re suing the company and pushing it to do better.
Matt Kaufman, chief safety officer at Roblox, said in a press briefing, “When we think about Roblox, our priority is safety and civility. We want to make Roblox a safe, positive, age-appropriate experience for everybody. We set extremely high standards for ourselves, and we understand that the public expects the same from us. Roblox was founded nearly 20 years ago, and it was built from the ground up, with safety in mind, and that’s because the founders of Roblox saw right away that there were kids and teens on the platform.”
He added, “Instead of shying away from that and calling it an adult only thing, they really embraced the fact that it was going to be an all-ages platform. We’ve built it knowing that from the beginning. We’re not retrofitting roadblocks today to make it work for kids. We’re building safety for kids and teens and adults in from the ground up.”
How it works
In the first week of December, Roblox will begin enforcing the age-check requirement in select markets, including Australia, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Here’s an example of how it works.
For example:
● Elisa (estimated age 12): Elisa has access to chat with users aged 15 or younger in
Experience chat. All users 16 or older are prevented from initiating or engaging in chat
with her.
● Marcus (estimated age 18): Marcus has access to chat with users aged 16 or older and
could add a younger sibling as a Trusted Connection, as long as they are 13 or older.
To keep Roblox’s youngest users safe, chat in experiences will be turned to default off for users under nine years old, unless a parent provides consent after an age check. Chat outside of experiences remains restricted for users under 13.
Age checks are designed to be fast, easy, and secure using Facial Age Estimation technology. Users can complete an age check directly within the Roblox app by following these steps:
- You’ll see a prompt in the app asking you to verify your age.
- Grant permission for Roblox to access your device’s camera.
- Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the age check, including centering yourself on the screen and turning your face to the left and right.
Once age-checked, users are notified of their assigned age group (U9, 9–12, 13–15, 16–17,
18–20, 21+), and can now chat with others in their age group and similar ones.
In addition to using Facial Age Estimation, users can confirm their age through ID verification. The age check process varies, depending on local laws. Parents will continue to have access to their child’s linked account and can modify their child’s birthday through Parental Controls after the facial age estimation process is complete.
“Proactive tools like age estimation are key to building a safer and more positive digital world for kids and teens. Roblox’s risk-based approach to features like voice chat sets a strong example of responsible innovation,” said Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute, in a statement.
Roblox’s age checks protect privacy
Roblox is using privacy protective methods to conduct age checks. The Facial Age Estimation process is fast, secure, and completed through the Roblox app using the device’s camera.
Images and video for age checks are processed by our vendor, Persona, and deleted
immediately after processing. Age checks are completely optional; however, features like chat will not be accessible unless the age check is complete.
“Roblox deploying this privacy-preserving implementation of thoughtful age assurance for its uniquely mixed audience of youth and adults will strengthen protections for younger players while respecting user rights,” said Jules Polonetsky, CEO, Future of Privacy Forum, in a statement.
Since January 2025, Roblox has introduced more than 145 new safety initiatives. The new age-based communications settings build on Roblox’s multilayered safety approach, which includes:
● Real-time AI monitoring across all text and voice communications, combined with
thousands of trained human experts
● Default restrictions for users under age 13
● Limits on mature content and external link sharing
● Close collaboration with law enforcement and over 20 global safety organizations
● Robust Parental Controls for visibility and customization
Today, Roblox is also launching a new Safety Center, a dedicated resource for parents and
caregivers that provides clear guides and tools to help them make informed decisions, set up Parental Controls, and support their child’s online experience.
The next steps
In early January, requirements expand to remaining markets wherever chat is available. The company said that Facial Age Estimation is private, secure and easy. Users check their age through the privacy-protective Facial Age Estimation process in the Roblox app, using the camera on the user’s device. Images and video for age checks are processed by Persona, a Roblox vendor, and are deleted immediately after processing.
After users complete the age-check process, users will be assigned to one of six age groups – Under 9, 9–12, 13–15, 16–17, 18–20, or 21+ – and can chat only with peers in their group or similar groups, as appropriate, helping ensure safer, more age-appropriate interactions.
Roblox says this is a “safety gold standard.” The company said that, for decades, the internet has relied on self-declared ages or more recently, reactive behavior-based signals. Roblox is going further with its approach by requiring age checks before any user can chat.
Roblox will also launch a new Safety Center (this website will be updated tomorrow) – a dedicated resource for parents and caregivers that provides clear guidance and tools to help them make informed decisions, set up Parental Controls, and support their child’s online experience.
Kaufman said Roblox relies as well on moderation and the company has invested heavily in it. However, he noted that in any given day, people engage with each other for 430 million hours and they send about six billion messages a day. Kaufman noted that the content changes frequently as developers make updates. And he said less than .01% of the content submitted to Roblox violates the rules.
“But we understand that even a tiny fraction of violative content is a big deal, and it has a large impact, and that’s why we take it really seriously,” Kaufman said.
He said that moderation is difficult, and it is best handled with the right context. But proper moderation should also happen in real time. Moderating with context is something that Roblox is working on and it is investing a huge amount of effort into it.
“People often ask if there is a silver bullet for safety. The reality is there is no silver bullet,” Kaufman said. “It’s really a multi-tiered approach to thinking about safety. We start off with our policies. We have our community standards, which set a baseline for what’s allowed and not allowed on the platform. Those policies are more stringent than what you would find in other platforms. There’s no dating, there’s no sexual content, there’s no profanity, there’s no sharing of images and video and chat.”
The AI solution?
To deal with the high volume of interactions, you need AI.
“But at the same time, AI is really good and making the same decision over and over and over again, but sometimes it has challenges with things that are in a gray area, and that’s where we need our people. Our people are also helping to train the AI. And sometimes we get things wrong, and we admit that, and when we get things wrong, users appeal decisions,” Kaufman said. “Our humans are there, our safety professionals are there in order to review those appeals.”
That analysis in turn makes the AI better. Roblox is working with parental advocacy groups, mental health organizations, governments, law enforcement agencies to help shape Roblox’s policies. Kaufman said the firm monitors all comms on the platform, and there is no encryption of messages. Algorithms are constantly looking for critical harms.
“While no system is ever perfect, our goal is to constantly improve and really lead the industry when it comes to safety,” he said.
How the age checks work
As for the age checks, Roblox will use them to determine who is on the platform and how old they are.
“And all this technology that we’re building, we’re also open sourcing it we want to take our own learnings and our own investments, and we want to share them with the rest of the industry,” Kaufman said. “It’s only if the entire industry is safer can we really make kids and teens safer.”
Because there are real issues with self-declared age, Roblox has decided to roll out age estimation for all users before they can access chat.
Raj Bhatia, vice president and head of user and discovery products, said that the company is also introducing age-based chat, which is designed to help users chat with people in similar age groups. It limits contact for people outside age groups.
With the age groups, a 14-year-old can talk with an eight-year-old kid, but the 14 year old cannot chat with some who is 18.
Asked if it can protect the photos and IDs when people submit them for verification of age, Bhatia said the company does not store them and discards them after using them for verification. It’s working with a partner that is also not storing them for privacy reasons.
Kaufman said that the facial estimation is accurate when measuring people between the ages of five and 25 within one or two years of age.
“It’s important to note that we are not looking to use this algorithm to determine your birthday. We’re looking at it to determine, basically, like, what is kind of an approximate age bucket that you’re in,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman declined to say the percentage of Roblox users who have had their age verified already. But he said it was a “good number” that have done it to access restricted content for over-18 players.
If Roblox uses the results of the facial age estimation and then determines there is a discrepancy versus the self-declared age, then it will flag the matter for further review. If someone is trying to get around the system, the fraud checks should notice the anomaly.
The system isn’t perfect, as no system is perfect, Kaufman said. But that’s why there is a multi-tiered approach with other safety measures.
The company is rolling out in limited countries now to test the systems. And it will roll out more broadly in January, Kaufman said.
“Age estimation systems are not deployed equally across every application, every website,” he said. “There are a number of fraud measures that can be implemented to make these systems more robust. It is up to each company that implements face-to-age estimation on whether they want to implement those fraud checks or not. We can’t speak to how other companies are doing that. What we can say about Roblox is that we’re taking this very seriously, and we are implementing fraud checks on our side to make sure that people are being honest and accurate about who they are.”