Roblox giving parents more control to protect young gamers

WASHINGTON (TNND) — Popular digital gaming platform Roblox is introducing updates to its parental controls, to protect the safety of young gamers.

Roblox lets users create and share experiences with friends. Pam Wisniewski, a computer science expert and mother, said as a parent, a real concern is who kids are sharing with.

Young children are often times in the same game, interacting with adults," Wisniewski said.

To further protect children playing the game, Roblox announced new updates giving parents more power over their child's account. This includes limiting screen time, remote access and access to their friends list.

"I think anything these platforms are doing to make these safer is definitely a step in the right direction," said Wisniewski.

David Schweidel, a marketing expert, said Roblox making these safety changes is similar to what Meta announced earlier this fall with Instagram teen accounts.

We're going to create more tools that we can put into parents hands so parents can have more fine-grained control," Schweidel said.

However, he believes more needs to be done and parents shouldn't have to bear all the responsibility.

"I don't think it goes nearly far enough if the true goal is to make it a safe platform for minors," said Schweidel.

Wisniewski agrees, adding that she believes the gaming and social media companies should be held to higher standards.

"The problem is we need a more holistic approach that's not just moving towards more parental control and less accountability of the platform," said Wisniewski.

These changes come following recent reports and criticism of the gaming platform's child-safety protections. Included in the changes is also a setting for auto-blocking direct messages to users under the age of 13 years old.