Roblox shows off Persona age estimation as it launches age-based accounts

Roblox is on a mission to prove that its facial age estimation system works as intended. The mega-popular gaming platform, which uses third-party biometrics from Persona, has faced a rash of bad press over the past year. Multiple states have launched lawsuits against the company for being too lax on child safety, with lawmakers and media variously labelling the platform as a “playground for predators” and comparing it to opioids in terms of the danger it presents. Language from a suit filed by the State of Louisiana sums up the general argument: “Roblox is overrun with harmful content and child predators because it prioritizes user growth, revenue, and profits over child safety.”

The company has gone to lengths to show that this isn’t the case. Since January 2025, it has rolled out a host of showcase safety features, including biometric age assurance via facial age estimation (FAE) for access to its Trusted Connections chat feature, which requires users who are 13 and over to complete a FAE scan to chat with connections they know in real life.

A recent report from NBC News looks at its most recent effort: the launch of separate age-based accounts for minors. This month, the platform began rolling out Roblox Kids and Roblox Select accounts in Australia, Indonesia, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

Moustachioed preteen can’t fake out Roblox FAE

Roblox demo’d the features for NBC, recruiting kids to try and fool the system, which uses Persona’s facial age estimation to place a user in an age band with corresponding settings. Users between five and eight get access to “minimal” and “mild” rated games, and can’t chat. From nine to fifteen, users can access “moderate” games and some chat features. Restrictions are generally lifted at 16.

The demo is crafted for mainstream network news: a nine-year-old wearing a bad fake moustache is not a genuine effort at deception, and arguably undersells the capabilities of facial age estimation tech.

But it speaks to the company’s need to stop the skid it has been on financially. The introduction of safety measures corresponded with a drop in daily active users, from around 152 million in Q3 2025 to 132 million in the first quarter of 2026 – prompting a one-day stock drop of 18 percent.

Meanwhile, Roblox is facing legal pressure in the U.S., where it has already settled with three states to the tune of millions, and faces at least nine more lawsuits – and potentially significant payouts.

Those two factors combined help explain why Roblox would find it advantageous to show little Cole in his moustache, tagged by Persona’s FAE at between nine and 15. The piece quotes Eliza Jacobs, Roblox’s vice president of safety product policy, who tells the boy, “sorry, you can tell your friends at school it doesn’t work” to try and bypass Roblox’s age checks.

Roblox makes significant effort to show progress on safety

The company’s blog explains that “the technology we use for age estimation has been tested and certified by third-party labs, achieving accuracy (a Mean Absolute Error) of within 1.4 years for users younger than 18. It’s categorically more accurate than self-declared age, but as with most things in life, it’s not 100 percent perfect.” As such, users who have an estimated age of 18 or older can prompt a one-time reset to redo their age check, and parents with a linked account can correct their child’s age via Parental Controls once after their initial age check. Users with a valid government ID can also use document-based identity verification to correct their age.

“From the beginning, Roblox has had strict built-in protections,” it says. “We have never supported the sharing of images or videos in chat. Chat on Roblox has never been encrypted, a deliberate choice so that we can monitor all chat for inappropriate language. As new innovations emerge and new global regulations are introduced, we continue to adapt and expand our safety systems.”

In short, Roblox says it is indeed doing what it can to keep kids safe on its platform. And the evidence suggests it is not wrong. Yet the company’s reputation and bottom line have taken significant damage already, and further lawsuits could add more holes to its battered hull.

Why is Roblox so useful to pedophiles?

Just this week, the CBC reported that the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary have tied reports of shootings in downtown St. John’s to 764, a group targeting children through online platforms. Power the report, the group is known to coerce youth into acts of self-harm, sharing intimate images, making threats or harming animals. For at least one case in the province involving 764, Roblox is believed to have served as the venue for an initial introduction.

In the case of many social platforms facing age restrictions, the argument against is that kids should not have to pay with limited access while platforms are not held to account. To its credit, Roblox, ostensibly a platform for kids, is trying to limit functionality that could put kids in danger.

But the bigger question is, why are so many predators operating on Roblox to begin with? The company says that “behind the scenes, we continuously evaluate user behavior, using multiple signals to detect users who are significantly older or younger than their profile says. If we detect this type of mismatch, we’ll prompt the user to complete a new age check.”

“As part of our proactive moderation systems, we leverage advanced detection and rapid response protocols to report possible illicit activity, violent threats, or other real-life harms to law enforcement. We maintain direct communication channels with organizations, such as the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), for immediate escalation of serious threats that we identify.”

All of these, while commendable, are reactive measures. Roblox might point to its new accounts as proactive measures, but those put the onus on parents and kids to ensure a user is placed in the right age band. More age checks might help stem some of the legal bleeding – but the point may be more about where Roblox is focusing its attention.

Perhaps the big question for the gaming platform is not, “what content and features should kids be allowed to access, and how do parents know that they’re appropriate?” – but rather, “why has our model proven to be a useful vehicle for sexual exploitation and cruelty, and how can we make it less useful in that respect?”

Article Topics

biometric age estimation  |  biometrics  |  Persona  |  Roblox