On April 13, 2026, Roblox announced the biggest change to its kids' product in years: a split into two new account tiers, Roblox Kids for ages 5 to 8 and Roblox Select for ages 9 to 15, with default chat switched off for the youngest band and a global rollout of facial age-estimation rolling alongside it. The announcement landed in the middle of an unusually loud regulatory cycle, with the Australian eSafety Commissioner's powers (including civil penalties of up to A$49.5 million) sitting visibly in the background.
This is a balanced analyst read, not a takedown. Roblox is genuinely trying. The question this guide answers is the one parents are actually asking this week: is the new Roblox Kids tier enough for my family, or is it time to switch a young child to something built differently from the start?
If you're already thinking about switching, our Best Alternatives Guide ranks the six creation-first platforms we'd put in front of a 5- to 12-year-old in 2026.
What changed on April 13, 2026
The announcement reorganised under-16 accounts around two tiers.
- Roblox Kids (ages 5 to 8). A walled version of the platform with chat off by default, a more conservative content rating filter, and a parent-managed setup. The catalogue of playable experiences is curated rather than open.
- Roblox Select (ages 9 to 15). A middle tier sitting between Roblox Kids and the standard adult experience. Chat is still available but with stricter defaults, and parents can lock it down further from the parent dashboard.
- Standard accounts (16+). Largely unchanged. The full Roblox experience, including open chat, full marketplace access, and the standard moderation regime.
Two operational changes underpin the tiers:
- Facial age-estimation as the gatekeeper. Roblox has been progressively rolling out a facial-scan feature (provided through a third-party vendor) that estimates a user's age from a short selfie video. The estimate (combined with declared birthdate and parent verification) is what places a new account in Kids, Select, or standard.
- Default chat off for under-9s. The headline change. Voice chat and text chat are off by default for any account in the Roblox Kids tier, with no path to enable it without parent action.
Roblox has framed this as a structural overhaul rather than a feature tweak. That framing is fair. Splitting a unified product into age-specific versions is a meaningful engineering and policy commitment.
Why now: the A$49.5M fine and the Anika Wells meeting
The April announcement did not happen in a vacuum. The pressure has been building for two years.
In February 2026, Australian Communications Minister Anika Wells held an "on notice" meeting with Roblox, formally signalling that the platform's existing safety measures were not considered adequate under the strengthened Online Safety Act. The Australian eSafety Commissioner has had the power to issue civil penalties of up to A$49.5 million for serious or repeated breaches of child safety codes since the 2024–2025 amendments came into force. That number is not theoretical. The Commissioner has used the same regime to bring enforcement actions against several other large platforms in the previous twelve months.
The political read: Australia decided to pick a fight with Roblox specifically, and Roblox decided not to wait for the fight to escalate. The April 13 tier rollout is, in part, the response.
Two other strands are worth tracking:
- Global facial age-estimation. What started as a UK-and-Australia compliance feature is now rolling out globally. The implementation uses a third-party age-estimation vendor and the scan is processed on-device where possible, but the broader question (how accurate is age-estimation from a selfie, and who gets penalised when it's wrong) remains genuinely open. Ofcom's Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes report tracks this kind of measure carefully.
- Under-16 social media regime. Australia's under-16 social media restrictions, phased in across 2025–2026, sit alongside the eSafety regime. Roblox's classification (game vs. social platform) has been argued in Parliament and in the regulator's office. The April tier split is, in effect, Roblox's bid to be classified as a game platform with strong child controls, not a social platform.
The Digital Duty of Care bill
The bigger structural change is still in front of us. The Digital Duty of Care Bill is currently moving through the Australian Parliament. If it passes in its current form, it would impose a positive obligation on platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm to children, rather than the current regime which focuses on responding to specific complaints.
Three reasons this matters beyond Australia:
- Regulatory contagion. The UK's Online Safety Act, the EU's Digital Services Act, and Singapore's Online Safety Code already impose related duties. Australia's bill would be the most strongly worded child-specific version. Other jurisdictions tend to converge on the strictest standard once one country sets it.
- Designs the platform must adopt. A "duty of care" regime pushes platforms toward "safety by design": features built in from the start, rather than configurable settings parents must find. The April Roblox Kids tier is, in part, an attempt to demonstrate that posture.
- Enforcement teeth. The bill, if passed, would give the regulator power to issue mandatory codes and significant penalties for non-compliance. The A$49.5 million ceiling could rise.
The bill's status changes week-to-week. The Australian Parliament's tracking page is the authoritative source.
Safety-by-design vs. safety retrofitting
Here is the distinction that matters most for a parent making a real decision this week.
Roblox was launched in 2006 as a creative social platform. The default experience involved playing experiences made by other users and chatting with them. Every safety feature added since (chat filters, age-restricted experiences, parent dashboards, the new tier system) has been added on top of that original architecture. Some of those additions are excellent. The April Kids tier is genuinely a strong piece of work. But the underlying design assumption (that strangers will interact, and the job of safety is to moderate that interaction well) has not changed. It cannot, without ceasing to be Roblox.
Buildaloo was built in 2025 as a solo creative sandbox. The default experience is a child describing a game out loud and an AI buddy (Loo) building it. There is no peer-to-peer chat. There is no public lobby. There is no library of strangers' games to scroll. Not because we blocked those things, but because we never built them in the first place.
This is the difference between safety-by-design and safety-by-retrofit, and it shows up most clearly in one place: the chat layer.
The "no-chat" advantage
The headline of the April Roblox announcement is that chat is now off by default for under-9s. That is real progress, and the Roblox team deserves credit for shipping it. But notice the shape of the change. Roblox has spent twenty years building a chat-enabled platform and is now investing engineering effort to disable that capability for a specific age band. The temptation is still in the product. Parents still have to actively check that chat is off, that their child's age tier is correctly assigned, and that the third-party age-estimation got it right.
Buildaloo never built chat. There is no toggle to check. There is no age-tier mismatch to discover. There is no risk that a future product update reintroduces a feature you thought was turned off. The only conversation a child has on Buildaloo is with Loo, and that conversation is fully visible to the parent in the dashboard.
This is not a moral judgement of Roblox. It is a structural one. A platform built around social interaction will always be retrofitting safety. A platform built around solo creation will not.
Buildaloo vs. the new Roblox Kids tier (April 2026)
| Roblox Kids (April 2026) | Buildaloo | |
|---|---|---|
| Chat with strangers | Off by default; toggle exists | Not built; no toggle |
| Age verification | Facial age-estimation + declared age | Parent-verified at signup; no biometrics |
| Creation-first | Limited (curated experiences for under-9s) | Yes, 100% creation |
| Typing required | Yes (most experiences) | No (voice-first) |
| Reading required | Yes (most experiences) | No (voice-first) |
| In-game currency | Yes (Robux, with parental spend controls) | None |
| Public lobby of strangers' games | Yes (curated for Kids tier) | None |
| Parent dashboard | Yes, expanded in 2026 | Yes, every conversation visible |
| Safety-by-design vs. retrofit | Retrofit (added to a 2006 social platform) | Designed-in from day one |
| Best-fit ages | 5–8 (Kids tier) | 5–12 |
This is not "Roblox bad, Buildaloo good." Roblox Kids is a stronger child-safety product than Roblox circa 2024. For a 9-year-old whose friendship group lives on Roblox, the April tier may be exactly right. The honest pitch for Buildaloo is narrower: if you want zero social risk surface for the youngest age band, the difference between "off by default" and "not built" is the only one that matters.
What this means for your family this week
Three concrete recommendations, ordered from "do it now" to "consider this":
1. Check your child's account tier. If your child has a Roblox account and is under 16, log in to the parent dashboard and confirm which tier they were placed in by the new system. Facial age-estimation is meaningfully accurate but not perfect; a 9-year-old who looks 13 may have been placed in a tier that allows more open interaction than you'd choose. If something looks off, you can manually correct it from the parent settings.
2. Verify the chat defaults. For Roblox Kids accounts, confirm that voice and text chat are off and that no add-on experiences have re-enabled them. For Roblox Select accounts, decide whether the looser default fits your child and lock it down further if not. The new dashboard has the controls; spend ten minutes with them.
3. For the youngest kids, consider a creation-first alternative. If your child is in the 5 to 8 band that the Roblox Kids tier is designed for, you also have the option of a platform where the social risk surface doesn't exist. Buildaloo is one option. ScratchJr is another (free, offline, no AI). The right choice depends on whether your child wants to invent their own games (Buildaloo) or assemble from a fixed palette (ScratchJr). Either is a structurally simpler safety story than even a well-tuned Roblox Kids tier.
FAQ
Is the new Roblox Kids tier actually safer than regular Roblox?
Yes, meaningfully. Default chat off, curated experiences, expanded parent dashboard, and stricter content filters all matter. The honest caveat: the underlying platform is still the same social architecture, with the safety features added on top. For a 5- to 8-year-old, the new tier is a real upgrade. For a parent who wants zero social risk surface, a platform that was never built for peer interaction is structurally simpler.
Should I cancel my child's Roblox account after the April 13 changes?
Not automatically. If your child is 9 or older and their friends play Roblox, the social cost of leaving may outweigh the marginal safety gain of switching. For children under 9, the case for a creation-first alternative (where chat is not built rather than disabled) is much stronger. The decision is family-specific.
What is facial age-estimation and how accurate is it?
It is a feature that estimates a person's age from a short selfie video using a third-party vision model. Published accuracy figures from the major vendors land in the high-80s to low-90s percent for adult age bands, and somewhat lower for the 8 to 12 band specifically. It is meaningfully better than self-declared age, but it is not perfect. Parents should treat the assigned tier as a default to verify rather than a finished decision.
Has the A$49.5 million fine actually been issued against Roblox?
Not as of the April 13 announcement. The A$49.5 million figure is the maximum civil penalty available under the Online Safety Act for serious or repeated breaches; it is the ceiling, not a confirmed fine. The Australian Communications Minister's "on notice" meeting in February signalled that enforcement was on the table if the safety regime was not strengthened. The April Roblox Kids tier appears to be the response to that signal.
What is the Digital Duty of Care bill?
It is legislation currently moving through the Australian Parliament that would impose a positive obligation on online platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm to children, rather than only responding to specific complaints. If passed, it would push platforms toward designed-in safety rather than configurable settings, and would expand the regulator's enforcement powers. Status changes regularly; the Australian Parliament page is the authoritative tracker.
What is the safest creation-first alternative for a 6-year-old in 2026?
Two strong options. Buildaloo is voice-first, COPPA-compliant, with no chat ever and a parent dashboard that shows every conversation. ScratchJr is free, offline, and uses picture-only blocks (no reading needed), but it has no AI generation and no parent dashboard. If your child wants to invent their own games out loud, Buildaloo is the fit. If you want a fully offline, ad-free, no-account option, ScratchJr is the established gold standard. Our Best Alternatives Guide ranks both alongside four others.
Build something instead
Buildaloo is a voice-first AI game maker for kids 5 to 12. Your child describes the game out loud. Loo, our AI buddy, builds it. No chat with strangers, no in-game currency, no public lobby, full parent dashboard. COPPA-compliant and built in Europe. For more switching context, see our Best Alternatives Guide.
Build your first voice-powered world in 60 seconds. Try the Buildaloo Voice-First Demo →
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