The online gaming platform Roblox this week rolled out a new system to estimate users’ ages by analyzing images of their faces. The company says the feature is meant to prevent children and teenagers from chatting with older users they do not know.
The move by Roblox is being closely watched as a test of how companies may respond as governments worldwide enact new regulations on social media aimed at protecting minors.
One of the first countries where Roblox is introducing facial verification is Australia, which next month will bar children under 16 from having accounts on social media, one of the most sweeping nationwide bans anywhere. Though Roblox is exempt for now because it’s classified as primarily a gaming platform, Australian officials have said they will continue to examine the company’s protections for underage users.
Here’s what to know:
What is Roblox, and why is it doing this?
In Roblox, players enter a virtual world where they can play and chat using digital characters.
Roughly 40 million Roblox users are 13 years old and younger, making up more than a third of the platform’s global users. That makes Roblox one of the main gathering places for children online.
Major social media networks like Facebook and Instagram require users to be at least 13 to open an account, although those restrictions can be hard to enforce. Unlike those platforms, Roblox until now has not placed age restrictions on users.
Because anyone can create an account and play for free, adults have been able to use features like private chats and voice conversations to talk with children.
The company says that it has long employed a host of safety measures, including parental controls, A.I. monitoring of voice and text messages, and chat filters that block profanity and information that can be used to identify people.
Even so, explicit material has slipped through. Roblox games have recreated mass shootings and depicted users’ avatars engaging in graphic sexual activity. There have also been reports of children being groomed, sexually exploited or, in one instance this year, kidnapped by someone they had met on Roblox.
How does Roblox estimate age?
Roblox says its goal is to ensure that users can chat only with others of similar ages, or with people they know in real life as “trusted connections.”
Age estimation on Roblox is voluntary for the next few weeks. It will become mandatory by early December in Australia, the Netherlands and New Zealand, the company said. In early January, it will be required wherever the app’s chat feature is available.
“This initiative is designed to provide even more age-appropriate experiences for all users, which we believe will improve interactions for users of all ages on Roblox,” it said in a news release on Tuesday.
Users are asked to turn their heads slightly to both sides, generating images that are used to estimate their ages. The images are captured and analyzed by a separate company, Persona, Roblox said.
Children and younger users will be placed into age brackets: under 9, 9 to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 18 and 18 to 20.
A user who is estimated to be 12, for example, can chat with users in their age group as well as those immediately above and below, but not with a user estimated to be 16 or older. Someone estimated to be 18 will be barred from chatting with anyone under 16, the company said.
Are there privacy risks?
Roblox says the images of users’ faces are deleted immediately after processing, reducing the threat to privacy.
David Baszucki, Roblox’s chief executive, said in an interview with The New York Times’s “Hard Fork” podcast that facial analysis was an additional tool among many for age verification. “We’re doing a bunch of monitoring,” he said. “But adding one more signal to that can really help us make cool decisions.”
But even when tech companies say users’ information is secure, there have been hacks and data breaches. This year, Tea Dating Advice, an app that allows women worried about their safety to share information about men they might date, said that hackers had gained access to 72,000 images, including selfies and photo identifications of its users.
Lewis Keller, a spokesman for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a British advocacy group, called Roblox’s new age-verification tool a positive step toward protecting children online.
While Roblox monitors private messages on the platform, the main risk to children has been from users persuading them to move their conversations to encrypted platforms where messages cannot be easily monitored, he said.
He added that as more platforms use device cameras to estimate users’ ages, it is important that the images are used only for that purpose and are not linked with accounts after the verification process.
What legal challenges has Roblox faced?
Roblox has faced lawsuits accusing the company of enabling sexual exploitation, sometimes with users being coerced or manipulated into sharing sexually explicit material or performing sexual acts. Dozens of such suits were filed in federal courts this year, according to a recent New York Times review of public records.
In one case, a mother in San Diego sued Roblox in September, accusing it of wrongful death after her teenage son killed himself in 2024. The mother, Becca Dallas, said her son Ethan told her that someone he met on the platform when he was 7 had coerced him into sending sexually explicit photos. Ethan identified the fellow Roblox player as a child, but Ms. Dallas later learned from law enforcement officers that he was likely a 37-year-old man.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. If you are someone living with loss, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention offers grief support.
Eli Tan contributed reporting from San Francisco, and Victoria Kim from Sydney.
Jenny Gross is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news and other topics.
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