If your child is under 16 and plays Roblox, the app they opened this week is not the one they opened last month. As of 16 June, Roblox has sorted every younger user into one of two new account types, each with its own games, chat rules and parental controls, and what your child can actually do now turns on whether their age has been checked. Everything below comes from Roblox’s own announcements.
Two tiers, sorted by age
There are now three versions of Roblox, divided by age. Roblox Kids, for ages 5 to 8, is the most locked down: chat off by default, and access only to games rated Minimal or Mild that have passed an extra round of review. Roblox Select, for ages 9 to 15, widens the catalogue to Moderate-rated games and lets chat open up gradually as a child gets older. Standard Roblox, unchanged, is for users 16 and over. Accounts move up on their own, from Kids to Select at 9 and from Select to standard at 16. Put simply, both the games and the chat widen as the child ages, and the account enforces it rather than the parent.
The age check is the hinge
Which tier a child lands in, and what they can do once there, depends on an age check. Roblox offers three routes: a facial age estimate from a short selfie video, a government ID, or, for under-13s, a parent confirming the child’s age through a linked account. Until that check is done, a child is placed into Kids or Select by their typed-in birthday, but chat stays switched off entirely, whatever age they claim. The facial estimate is quick, but it works in age bands and can misjudge children near the edges, a younger-looking teenager pushed down a tier, an older-looking child read up one. If that happens, you can correct it with ID.
The sharpest changes are about contact, not content
Chat is now gated behind the age check for everyone, so an unverified account is a no-chat account. Where chat is available on a Select account, a child can talk only to others in their own or a similar age group, or to Trusted Friends, a label for people they already know off the platform. Sharing or viewing social-media links is now limited to verified over-16s, and not only in chat: it covers profiles, game pages and community areas too. That closes one of the common routes children used to move a contact off Roblox and onto a less moderated app. Roblox Moments, the clip-sharing feature, is switched off for both younger tiers at launch.
If your child makes games, not just plays them
One change is easy to miss if your child publishes their own experiences rather than only playing them. To keep a game visible to under-16 players, a creator now has to verify their identity, turn on two-factor authentication, and either hold a paid subscription or pay a one-off refundable publishing fee, then pass review. A child who builds on Roblox may find their game quietly drops out of the under-16 catalogue until those steps are done.
What this means for you right now
Verify your child’s age yourself, as the linked parent. It is the most reliable way to land them in the right tier rather than wherever a camera guesses, and on a Kids account it is also the only way to switch on any chat at all, which you may or may not want.
Once you are linked, check the Select chat settings rather than assuming the defaults sit where you would put them. They open up with age automatically, and the account makes that call unless you look.
Use the controls that now run through age 15: block specific games one at a time, set screen-time and spending limits, and read the friends list and the list of games your child actually plays, both of which the dashboard shows you.
And if your child is a builder, check that their published games still meet the new creator requirements, or they will disappear for their under-16 audience.
Where Roblox now sits, and how it compares with the other platforms your child uses, is on the Wired Parents Platform Safety Scorecard.
Sources:
 and Select (9-15) accounts worldwide. What each tier allows, why the age check matters, and the settings to check.){kind=link}