Safer Internet Day: Empowering Users of All Ages With Safety Tools and Guidance

On this Safer Internet Day, Roblox is proud to help promote the safe and positive use of digital technology for children, teens, and young adults. As a company, we continually work to optimize our safety features to make them effective, comprehensive, and easy to use. Of course, no system is perfect, and we can’t prevent all problematic content from appearing on Roblox. That’s why we work to educate parents and encourage them to talk to their children about online safety, and we work closely with everyone—safety experts, government agencies, and mental health organizations—to help keep our community safe and civil.  

Roblox sponsored this year’s State of the Net conference, where Naren Koneru, Vice President of Engineering, Trust, and Safety, led a lightning talk on open-sourcing AI models for safety and moderation. Roblox works closely with ROOST, an organization dedicated to developing and distributing safety tools, where Koneru is co-chair of the Technical Design Committee. We also contribute some of our safety models to the community with the goal of accelerating technical advancements to help make the internet safer. Representatives from Roblox’s civility team will also participate in events hosted by ConnectSafely in Sacramento and the UK Safer Internet Centre in London. 

How Roblox Is Participating

In addition to these events, we’re updating our Safety Center and introducing a new Youth Guide to Community Standards. The Youth Guide is written to be digestible for younger users, making it easier to understand our guidelines and their importance in helping keep Roblox safe and civil. This resource complements recent updates to our Community Standards, Civility, and Transparency pages, to keep them current, clear, and easy to use. This includes a policy update regarding approved methods for creators to link off platform, as previously announced here.

The Youth Guide was developed in partnership with the members of Roblox’s Teen Council and youth attendees at the Digital Wellness Lab’s Amplify Youth summit. These collaborations helped us keep our guide clear and easy to understand. Our young collaborators encouraged us to avoid overly formal language, keeping it encouraging and conversational—closer to how a younger user might speak. They suggested summarizing each rule with plain language, using bullets to make any additional information more digestible. 

One Teen Council member, Hannah, explained the guide and how important it is: “The best way to reduce the number of rule-breakers on a platform is to have everyone, at any reading level, equally understand what they are allowed to do and what they aren’t.” 

Alex, another Teen Council member, agreed: “On a platform with people of different ages and backgrounds, it’s crucial that everyone understands the rules and what’s expected of them. The redesign makes the Community Standards much easier to understand and follow.” 

We’re also excited to announce that we’re partnering with the Mental Health Coalition as part of our ongoing efforts to keep the internet safe and to foster a positive environment for young people. Through our partnership, we’re joining the coalition’s Thrive program, which allows online platforms to securely share signals about content related to self-harm, suicide, or eating disorders. Joining Thrive allows us to protect Roblox users and align with industry peers to combat this type of harm. 

Filling a critical gap for reporting this type of content, Thrive was developed because these signals are not isolated to any one platform. Like a neighborhood watch for the internet, Thrive enables platforms to share a secure, digital fingerprint of harmful content with others. Working together, companies can investigate and act if similar content is being shared on their platforms. Thrive allows us to act quickly so we can work to stop harmful viral challenges or content before they even touch the Roblox community. We’ll also collaborate with the Mental Health Coalition to develop resources for younger users and parents related to mental health and gaming. 

Our partnership with the Mental Health Coalition builds on our work with ThroughLine, a crisis support service, and the Tech Coalition’s Lantern program. Lantern enables companies to share signals of potential child endangerment or abuse. These types of coordinated industry programs help prevent bad actors from moving between multiple platforms to evade detection. That’s why we continue to explore new partnerships with organizations focused on mental health and well-being for younger users and will share more on those as they take shape.

We’re proud to be part of this global discussion around online safety and how Roblox can continue this work with parents, experts, and industry partners to help keep children safe online. To learn more this Safer Internet Day, please visit our Civility Site for useful advice and resources from our partners. Our Parent & Caregiver Guide has useful information for parents, including how to link their account to their child’s to set parental controls.