In short: Roblox is introducing three mandatory age-based account levels — Kids (5-8), Select (9-15), and Standard (16+) — starting in mid-May, segregating content and chat access by age group. The move follows lawsuits filed by eight U.S. state attorneys general over child safety failures and relies on the facial age verification system mandated in January. Developers must now pay $5 a month and verify their identity to have content appear in younger tiers. But the system’s credibility is under pressure: age-verified accounts went for $4 on eBay after the verification mandate, and Wired reported that face scans could be passed by babies.
Roblox divides its more than 85 million daily active user base into three age-specific tiers, Kids (5-8), Select (9-15), and Standard (16+), beginning in mid-May. The move follows lawsuits filed by at least eight U.S. state attorneys general over child safety failures, but the effectiveness of the age-verification technology that underpins the system remains hotly contested.
Three account types correspond to the platform’s existing content maturity labels: Minimal, Light, Medium, and Restricted. Child accounts are most often locked, chat is disabled by default, and access is limited to Minimal and Mild experiences. Choose accounts that span the 9-15 bracket, unlock Medium content, and allow chat with users in a similar age range and approved by a parent”reliable friends.” At 16, users automatically graduate to a full Roblox account, although Restricted content remains locked until 18.
Roblox says the rollout should be completed globally by June. Users who have not completed age verification by then will be redirected to a Child-like experience with no access to chat and no games rated above “Moderate”. This effectively makes age verification mandatory for anyone who wants to use the platform as intended.
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The age limit of the audience poses a content tagging problem at scale. Roblox is home to millions of user-created experiences, and ensuring that each one carries the correct maturity rating is a prerequisite for the level system to work. The company’s solution includes three requirements for developers: identity verification, two-step authentication, and a $5/month Roblox Plus subscription. According to Roblox, the logic is that these barriers demonstrate “long-term commitment to the platform” and will encourage accurate self-labeling.
When self-tagging fails, AI moderation it is supposed to occupy the space. Roblox said it will monitor gameplay patterns in real-time, checking whether on-screen activity and chat behavior conforms to the advertised maturity label. The Company also allows users 16 and older to “play new games first,” provides a buffer before young users encounter fresh content, though as Engadget’s Jessica Conditt points out, the claim relies on an overgeneralization that can’t guarantee a child will never encounter a mislabeled experience before the AI notes it.
Authentication problem
In the tiered system, everything depends on the age the users claim. Beginning in January 2026, Roblox requires users worldwide to complete an approximate facial age scan powered by third-party provider Persona to access chat. The technology places users into one of six brackets (9, 9-12, 13-15, 16-17, 18-20, 21+) and deletes biometric data immediately after processing. Persona’s age estimation models achieved an average absolute error of 1.4 years for users under the age of 18 in testing approved by the UK Age Verification Certification Scheme.
But in a system with age brackets like three years, a margin of error of 1.4 years is not insignificant. In January, Wired reported that the checks could be bypassed by toddlers, and just days after the mandate went into effect, age-verified Roblox accounts were selling for less than $4 on eBay, allowing anyone, including adults, to log in. children’s chat roomsbypassing the system entirely. Social media has since been flooded with celebrity photos, virtual avatars and videos of users defeating facial scanning using captured facial hair.
Roblox Chief Security Officer Matt Kaufman acknowledged the issue in a press briefing ahead of today’s announcement. “If we get it wrong, we offer several ways for users to fix it“,” he said, adding that the platform continuously monitors user behavior against age verification information and will request verification again if the two diverge.
Eight states and counting
The context of all this is legal, not voluntary. The attorneys general of Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky, Iowa, Tennessee, Nebraska and Arkansas have filed lawsuits against Roblox for child safety violations. Texas AG Ken Paxton called the platform “a digital playground that hides predators.” was the first consumer protection case brought directly against Roblox by the Louisiana attorney general.In 2026, a federal multi-district court consolidated the cases in California under Judge Seeborg.
The lawsuits allege that Roblox’s design and moderation failures exposed children to grooming, open content, and exploitation. Against this backdrop, the tiered account system reads less as a proactive security initiative and more as a legal necessity, the minimum structural change required to demonstrate that the company is taking the problem seriously.
What the levels actually change
Two new parental control features arriving in June reinforce the system’s practical utility. Parents will be able to block any game and control access to direct chat until the child turns 16, thereby closing the previous loophole that allowed children over the age of 13 to unblock the experience independently. The second feature allows parents to approve specific games outside of their child’s default age limit on a case-by-case basis, which solves the common scenario of a younger sibling wanting to play with an older sibling.
Roblox says more than half of its user base has already completed age verification. The company reported 85 million daily active users in Q4 2024, a 69 percent increase to 144 million in Q4 2025. 35 percent of verified users are under the age of 13, 38 percent are between the ages of 13 and 17, and 27 percent are adults. The platform revenue It reached $4.9 billion in 2025, from $6 billion to $6.2 billion in 2026.
The structural change is real: for the first time in Roblox, a five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old will live in meaningfully different products. What separates them is the question of whether the technology can withstand a $4 eBay listing prosecutors general, and parents, will be watching most closely.
