I’ve been a gamer for most of my life — through every console, genre, and era. I can go on and on in describing the games in my Steam Library, and we’ll never be done.
Admittedly though, I’ve only learned Roblox in the past two years. It’s not even through my own friends or feed (I used to write gaming reviews), but from my nieces and nephews who aren’t even over the age of 13.
I did pick it up because I wanted to be that cool uncle who plays with them, but I honestly will probably never come close to how fluently these kids are moving through this platform. Before I knew it, they were playing games I’ve never heard of, using gaming lingo I do not understand, and making online friends faster than I’ve ever made friends in any game.
So, yes, this three-decade-long gamer can’t keep up. Imagine what we’re expecting from the average parent when we tell them to “watch over their children” and to use “parental controls.”
Now, in my siblings’ defense, I don’t think they’ve ever realized — just like most of us — that modern gaming has changed significantly over the past decade. Three days ago, I wrote about how Roblox is practically a social platform, built to keep users engaged and stimulated not just with games (or “experiences,” in Roblox language), but with communities.
Lately, in light of recent tragic events, I’ve been looking into how platforms like Roblox have been keeping our kids safe. And to be fair, they do have these safeguards in place — age verification and parental controls — providing every tool a responsible parent would need to manage their kids’ experience.
That’s assuming they use them, of course. And there lies the problem.
Roblox’s entire safety model rests on one dangerous assumption: that behind every child is a parent who understands the platform better than their children, if at all.
But that adult does not exist in many homes. The child IS the expert. So designing safety models around this assumption is not only out-of-touch, but dangerous given the reach and scale of Roblox.
Parents are responsible, yes. But that’s not enough.
Okay, I probably have to be careful here. Because parents are, in fact, responsible for their children. I wouldn’t pretend otherwise.
The reality is that not every child would have tech-savvy parents, or even just responsible parents. That’s not to say this isn’t a problem, and that this is for Roblox to solve.
But it is Roblox’s problem if you build a platform, feature by feature, designed to be governed by someone who’s not going to show up.
So, no, we cannot just operate on good faith, that parents will be responsible and use these features, or even keep their kids off these platforms. That’s where regulation comes into play, and why governments need to step in and review how these platforms are designed. And I do believe, as much as I hate state overreach, that when it comes to children’s safety, governments have the right to ban harmful technology.
I’m not saying Roblox should be banned. But it should be on the table if we’re to compel these tech platforms to improve their services and keep our children safe. Because they’re catering to a vulnerable audience, Roblox cannot be allowed to just ignore the gaps in parent-dependent safety mechanisms. It must be made to defend its business model without pushing the blame and burden on parents.
At the core of the problem is age-verification.
Roblox has, in fact, launched tiered experiences on its platform, changing the experience of its users based on their age group. For example, chat features are disabled for kids aged 9 and younger. Content is also limited to those rated mild to moderate.
But these tiered experiences and safeguards can only really be effective if Roblox is able to effectively verify the age of its users. For this, Roblox has rolled out an AI-powered age gating system where users are required to submit images and videos of their face, which are analyzed to estimate their age.
Roblox announced earlier this month that its system has already processed 338 million age-check records. According to the company, third-party labs have certified their technology which “proved to be more accurate than the self-declared age.”
After launching this system earlier this year, however, there have been reports that users bypassed the age checks using modified screenshots, and that the AI-powered verification was misidentifying ages.
‘Verification fatigue’
Anapol Weiss, a US-based law firm actively litigating Roblox, also said Roblox’s move to facial verification also creates a new psychological barrier: parents are concerned about providing their children’s facial data to a tech company, even if they promise to delete it.
The firm also noted a phenomenon called “verification fatigue,” where parents who are not savvy enough to get through the technical processes for verification have begun doing the age checks on behalf of their children, inadvertently creating a 21+ account for minors.
“While Roblox presents these updates as a major shift, experts and safety advocates remain cautious. By mandating biometric age estimation for social features, Roblox is attempting to distance itself from its reputation as a hunting ground for bad actors and rebrand as a platform focused on digital civility,” the firm said in a blog published on their website.
Now in their defense, Roblox also acknowledged in an August 2026 update that “accounts could be shared or handed off to a younger sibling,” and that “bad actors could attempt to probe [their] defenses.” To deal with this, Roblox said they’ve built a machine learning layer that “evaluates whether an account’s ongoing behavior still matches its estimated age over time.”
Roblox also rolled out a new dashboard for parents. But to use it, a parent must link accounts, navigate through unfamiliar icons, understand what each toggle does, and keep up with the pace of their children who probably already are several steps ahead of them.
Again, this assumes an adult who is present, tech-fluent, patient, and literate in the platform’s design language. Now think about whether that description applies to many parents you know, especially in a country where most parents did not grow up gaming and may have never even opened a settings menu in their lifetime.
Why burden parents?
We never ask parents to crash-test a family car. Manufacturers are required to prove it before they’re sold.
The burden is always placed on the companies that build the products and benefit from them. We cannot let parents discover the risks in these platforms the hard way.
This is where the state can come in — not to guess or speculate, but to actually regulate based on evidence. They need to compel Roblox to declare how their systems actually work and scientifically and independently review its design, then enforce reasonable safety standards.
How well does age assurance really perform? How fast is grooming content detected and removed, and who verified that figure? How easily can a child be pulled off-platform?
The standard has to be a platform that’s safe for all children, not just the ones with tech-savvy parents with the time and patience to monitor a dashboard. Safety mechanisms must take into account parents who work multiple jobs, or have never used technology beyond their mobile phones.
If Roblox can meet that burden, then good. If not, then restricting it is not censorship but the ordinary logic of product safety that we apply to cars and instant formula, and everything else we let near a child. The ball is now in Roblox’s court. — Rappler.com
