Roblox（罗布乐思）11月18日发布《安全系统和家长控制的重大更新》，将对针对最年幼用户的内置保护措施进行重大更新，并提供易于使用的工具，让父母和看护人有更多的控制权和清晰度。以及正在调整有关 13 岁以下儿童通信方式的内置限制，家长现在可以从自己的设备而不是孩子的设备访问家长控制，并监控孩子的屏幕时间。

这些变化是在多轮内部研究后制定和实施的，包括访谈、可用性研究和对家长和孩子的国际调查，以及咨询儿童安全和媒体素养组织的专家。Roblox通过以下方式为最年轻的用户进行这些更改：（1） 让家长更轻松、更直观地管理孩子的设置，以及 （2） 更新Roblox的内置限制以提供独立于家长控制的某些保护。这些变化得到了合作伙伴的支持，包括全国媒体素养教育协会 （NAMLE） 和家庭在线安全研究所 （FOSI）。FOSI 首席执行官 Stephen Balkam 表示：“FOSI 赞扬 Roblox 为优先考虑其最年轻用户的安全和福祉而做出的持续努力。通过为父母提供新的控制措施，使他们能够以灵活、有意义的方式监督孩子的活动，Roblox 正在朝着构建更安全的数字环境迈出重要一步。在接下来的几个月里，Roblox将改变 13 岁以下儿童在平台上的交流方式。提醒一下，Roblox的内置通信过滤器和审核规则仍然适用于任何聊天功能和所有年龄段的用户，包括13岁及以上的用户。13岁以下的用户将无法再在游戏或体验（也称为平台聊天）之外直接在 Roblox 上向其他人发送消息。此外，Roblox还推出了一项内置设置，该设置将限制 13 岁以下的用户只能在游戏或体验中公开广播消息。默认情况下，未满 13 周岁的用户将无法直接向他人发送消息。家长可以在 Parental Controls 中更改此设置。

Roblox已经为最年轻的用户更新了内置的年龄成熟度设置。9 岁以下的用户现在默认只能访问“最小”或“轻度”内容，并且只有在获得家长同意的情况下才能访问“中等”内容。家长仍然可以选择他们认为最适合孩子的级别。

Major Updates to Our Safety Systems and Parental Controls

We are introducing significant updates to the built-in protections for our youngest users and easy-to-use tools to give parents and caregivers more control and clarity.

We are adjusting our built-in limits around how children under age 13 can communicate.Parents can now access parental controls from their own devices rather than from their child’s device and monitor their child’s screen time.Safety is and always has been foundational to everything we do at Roblox. We’ve spent nearly two decades building strong safety systems, but we are always evolving our systems as new technology becomes available. We regularly ship updates to our safety and policy systems. We've already shipped more than 30 improvements this year. Today, we are sharing the latest updates to our safety controls, including significant improvements to parental controls, how users under age 13 can communicate on Roblox, new content labels, and built-in protections for younger users. We’re excited to share these extensive updates today.These changes were developed and implemented after multiple rounds of internal research, including interviews, usability studies, and international surveys with parents and kids, and consultation with experts from child safety and media literacy organizations. We are making these changes for our youngest users by: (1) making it easier and more intuitive for parents to manage their child’s settings, and (2) updating our built-in limits to provide certain protections, independent of parental controls. These changes have been supported by partners, including the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) and the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI).Stephen Balkam, CEO of FOSI, said, “FOSI applauds Roblox’s ongoing efforts to prioritize the safety and well-being of its youngest users. By empowering parents with new controls that allow them to oversee their child’s activity in a flexible, meaningful way, Roblox is taking significant steps toward building a safer digital environment.”Updates to Parental ControlsAccounts with parent privileges: While we already provide parental controls, including spend limits—those have been managed from the child’s account. Today we’re launching remote management, which allows parents and caregivers to adjust controls and review their child’s activity even if they aren’t physically together. Parents who want to be more involved in monitoring their child’s activities can link their Roblox account to their child’s account—after verifying themselves using an ID or credit card. After linking accounts, parents can manage their child’s experience and access from Parental Controls.Friends list and screen-time monitoring: Part of our long-term vision is to give parents granular controls to monitor and limit how much time their child spends on Roblox, which is something we've heard is important to parents. In the Parental Controls dashboard, parents can now see their child’s average screen time over the past week, as well as their child’s friends list. Parents and caregivers can also set daily screen-time limits. Once the limit is reached, their child cannot access Roblox until the next day.Built-In Restrictions for CommunicationsConnecting with others is core to the Roblox experience, and we want to facilitate that with safety in mind. Over the next few months, we are making changes to how children under age 13 can communicate on the platform. As a reminder, our built-in filters and moderation rules for communication still apply for any chat features and for users of all ages, including those 13 and older.Users under the age of 13 will no longer be able to directly message others on Roblox outside of games or experiences (also known as platform chat).In addition, we are introducing a built-in setting that will limit users under age 13 to public broadcast messages only within a game or experience. By default, users younger than 13 will not be able to directly message others. Parents can change this setting in Parental Controls.We are constantly evolving and innovating on our safety systems. We are always working to make chat incredibly safe and are exploring new ways for users of all ages to communicate and interact safely on Roblox. Many of these updates are launching today. For others, we are actively working with our creator community to implement updates across all experiences. We expect all these changes to be implemented by the first quarter of 2025.Content Maturity LimitsContent Labels: We’ve worked closely with kids and parents to understand their knowledge of Roblox’s platform; the information and controls they are looking for; and the concerns they have around safety, engagement, and communication on our platform. Children develop on different timelines, and from both our research and external research, we know that parents have different comfort levels regarding the type of content their child engages with. Labeling experiences based purely on age does not respect the diverse expectations different families have.Today, we’re launching simplified descriptions of the types of content available. Experience Guidelines will be renamed Content Labels, and we will no longer label experiences by age. Instead, we’ll label experiences based on the type of content users can expect in an experience. These updates should provide parents greater clarity to make informed decisions about what is appropriate for their child.

We’ve updated our built-in maturity settings for our youngest users. Users under 9 can now only access “Minimal” or “Mild” content by default and can access “Moderate” content only with parental consent. Parents still have the option to select the level they feel is most appropriate for their child.

Age-gated experiences: Traditional rating systems apply to content but don’t consider user behavior when determining an age rating. We take a more restrictive approach for our younger users and are now age-gating certain experiences for users under age 13 based on the type of user behaviors sometimes found in those experiences. These new restrictions apply to experiences primarily designed for socializing with users outside of their friends list and experiences that allow free-form writing and drawing, such as on a chalkboard or a whiteboard or with spray paint.Age-based settings: Roblox adapts as children grow up, so a child’s built-in account settings will automatically update as they move from one age group to another. We want parents and children to have an opportunity to discuss their current Roblox usage, what features are appropriate going forward, and whether to make any updates to the built-in settings. To facilitate those conversations, we will notify the child and linked parents about upcoming changes to the child’s age-based settings 30 days before the changes go into effect.Continuing to Prioritize SafetyWhen we design new products, we are mindful of several important factors. We are fundamentally a platform for play, which differs from other places on the internet, where the focus is on browsing or consuming content. Since the day we launched, we've had a growing population of younger users and we want to help keep them safe on Roblox. We take safety extremely seriously.We are grateful for the contributions and support we’ve received from child safety and media literacy organizations and child development experts. These experts provided input, reviewed our updates, and shared perspectives that helped us make these controls as useful as possible for both parents and kids.Executive Director of NAMLE Michelle Ciulla Lipkin said, “As media literacy experts, we commend efforts to improve safeguards, mitigate risk, and give parents and kids an opportunity to engage together around important topics like privacy and security. NAMLE is proud to partner with Roblox and support their commitment to making the online space safer and more civil for young people.”While there is no “perfect” when it comes to online safety, our overall approach is systematic and thoughtful. We regularly update our policies and systems to help keep children safe on Roblox—regardless of whether parents elect to use our parental controls. Our goal is to make Roblox the safest and most civil online platform possible because it is the right thing for children, their parents and caregivers, our investors, and our company.