Roblox is splitting its youngest users into two age-based account tiers, a move that tightens chat, game access, and parental controls ahead of a June rollout. The change is a clear response to years of safety complaints around a platform that has become one of the internet’s busiest playgrounds, and it arrives after pressure from regulators intensified in the US.
David Baszucki announced the new system on April 13. Instead of one blanket experience for everyone under 16, Roblox will assign users automatically through its facial age-check system, which already became mandatory for chat access in January 2026. That gives the company a more granular way to limit what younger players can see and say without making parents do all the work.
Roblox Kids and Roblox Select
The new structure is simple enough to fit on a napkin. Roblox Kids is for ages five to eight, and chat is disabled by default. Those accounts can only access games with Minimal or Mild maturity ratings.
- Roblox Kids: ages five to eight, chat off by default, Minimal or Mild games only
- Roblox Select: ages nine to 15, Moderate-rated games allowed, chat can be enabled gradually
- Standard account: available once a user turns 16
Roblox Select gives older kids a little more room to roam. They can reach Moderate-rated games, and chat can be turned on in stages as they get older. It is a far more explicit age ladder than the usual ”parents, figure it out” approach most platforms still lean on.
What parents can block and approve
Parents get the kind of control that tends to show up only after enough headlines and lawsuits. They can individually block or approve titles for users up to age 15, which matters because the real battle is rarely about one bad game; it is about the endless stream of slightly-too-old content that slips through by default. For Roblox, the upside is obvious: fewer surprises, fewer excuses.
Developers are the ones taking the harder road. To reach younger audiences, they will need ID verification, two-step authentication, and an active Roblox Plus subscription that costs $4.99 per month. That is a higher bar than many creators are used to, but it is also the sort of gatekeeping regulators have been pushing the industry toward for years.
Why Roblox is moving now
The timing is not subtle. Roblox is facing lawsuits from the attorneys general of Louisiana and Texas over child safety concerns, and platforms across gaming and social media are under growing pressure to show they can police age access without treating it like an afterthought. Roblox’s new tiers are arriving globally at the beginning of June 2026, with a transition period for age verification.
If this works, Roblox could end up setting a template other platforms copy, not because they suddenly developed a conscience, but because regulators increasingly expect one. The question now is whether the company can make the system strict enough to matter without turning age checks into another tedious hoop that parents and teens learn to dodge.