August 2025 General Game Discussion

[Zed Clampet]

Regarding the first point, it's possible to disable chat entirely in Roblox for your child's account, which vastly limits the dangers they could face from chatting with strangers. Parents should use these existing controls to protect their kids.

For the second point, I do think that we've gotten far too lax about letting platforms publish user-made content without taking responsibility for what they're hosting and relying on algorithms and other users to report content that breaks their rules. Also, none of these platforms give users anywhere near enough control to limit what they or their children can interact with. This means that, as a parent, you need to keep a close eye on what your kid is doing when you let them use these platforms, just as much as it would be your job as a parent to keep an eye on your kid when they're anywhere else where they can freely interact with stuff put there by random strangers.

IMO, this shouldn't be a parental choice. Wizard101, for instance, simply blocks all chat for kids under 13, and then has restricted chat (only words on a list) for 13 to 17. It works great and no one complains. If you want your 10yo to be able to talk to his friend while they play, get them on Discord.

 

[Pifanjr]

IMO, this shouldn't be a parental choice. Wizard101, for instance, simply blocks all chat for kids under 13, and then has restricted chat (only words on a list) for 13 to 17. It works great and no one complains. If you want your 10yo to be able to talk to his friend while they play, get them on Discord.

Roblox does block direct messages for kids under 13 entirely it seems, so you can't chat outside of a game, and in-game chat is filtered, but I agree that it's better to just block it entirely.

Note that Discord has had some controversy around child grooming as well, so I wouldn't recommend giving your kids their own Discord account if you're not going to monitor that as well.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Roblox does block direct messages for kids under 13 entirely it seems, so you can't chat outside of a game, and in-game chat is filtered, but I agree that it's better to just block it entirely.

Note that Discord has had some controversy around child grooming as well, so I wouldn't recommend giving your kids their own Discord account if you're not going to monitor that as well.

You can set up Discord to only allow certain users on your server.