Roblox

Is Roblox safe for kids?

Roblox is not a privacy disaster. It is a child-safety problem. Its data collection and security are roughly what you would expect from a large game company, but adults have used it to find, groom and exploit children, and by July 2026 that had produced 170 pending federal lawsuits. Roblox only made age checks a condition of chat in January 2026. We score it 55/100, with its child-safety factor among the lowest of any app we cover.

Most of the tens of millions of children who play every day never have a bad experience. The risk is concentrated in chat, and parents can control chat.

How predators used Roblox

The lawsuits describe a repeated pattern. An adult poses as a child in a popular game, befriends a player, offers Robux or help, and then moves the conversation to Discord or Snapchat, where Roblox's chat filters do not reach. Some cases led to sexual abuse, abduction or extortion.

Federal cases have been combined as In re: Roblox Corporation Child Sexual Exploitation and Assault Litigation, MDL No. 3166, in the Northern District of California. The court reported 170 pending actions as of 1 July 2026, up from about 80 in December 2025. State attorneys general have sued separately: Louisiana in August 2025, Texas in November 2025, and Florida and Tennessee since. Turkey has blocked Roblox since August 2024.

Roblox denies the allegations and points to its filtering of all text chat, its moderation staff and the changes it made in 2025 and 2026. None of the US cases had reached a verdict by October 2026.

What changed in January 2026

Roblox announced in November 2025 that every user would need to complete an age check to use chat. After a trial in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, it became mandatory worldwide in January 2026.

• A player records a short video selfie in the app, or uploads an ID if they are 13 or older.
• Persona, a third-party company, estimates the age. Roblox says both companies delete the images afterwards.
• The player is placed in one of six bands: under 9, 9 to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, 18 to 20, and 21 and over.
• Chat is limited to similar ages. A 12-year-old can chat with players up to 15, and nobody 16 or older can contact them unless they are a Trusted Connection.

Facial age estimation is less accurate for people near the boundaries, and a child using a parent's phone or an older sibling's face can end up in the wrong band. It is a big improvement, not a guarantee.

Privacy and account security

Apple's privacy label lists purchases, coarse location, email, gameplay and audio content, search history, identifiers and advertising data as linked to the player, with some used for Roblox's own marketing. Text messages are not linked. Roblox scans all chat, which is good for safety and means nothing typed on Roblox is private.

The more common harm is account theft. "Free Robux" sites, fake trading offers and phishing pages steal logins, and stolen accounts are stripped of rare items. Two-step verificationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary stops most of it.

A parent's checklist

1. Create your own account and link it through Parental Controls in your child's settings. From there you can set chat limits, spending caps and screen time.
2. For under-13s, turn chat off or limit it to Friends, and review the friends list together.
3. Set a monthly spending limit. Robux and loot-box style items are easy to overspend on.
4. Turn on two-step verificationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary on your child's account, linked to your email.
5. Tell your child that anyone who asks to move to another app, offers Robux for photos or asks them to keep a secret should be reported and blocked, and that they will not be in trouble for telling you.

How we scored it

Scams and harmful content (25) is the lowest factor score in our apps section, because of the scale of exploitation claims. Privacy (58), security (62) and transparency and control (66) are ordinary, which keeps the overall score at 55. Compare TikTok, whose risks for children are more about design and data than direct contact.