In an effort to address child safety concerns, digital gaming platform Roblox announced Monday that it is rolling out a major update to its safety features and parental controls.

The update includes amped-up parental controls and communication restrictions for players under 13.

“Any instance of a child being hurt or put in danger that has anything to do with Roblox is just absolutely unacceptable for us,” Roblox’s chief safety officer, Matt Kaufman, told Here & Now on Monday. “We make safety our number one priority.”

Roblox has been criticized for a lack of child safety protocols in the past. These updates look to change that.

“You’re seeing lawsuits filed across the country alleging child safety concerns on these big platforms that attract children,” Olivia Carville, a journalist covering child safety in the digital world, told Here & Now in October. “Congress, the courts, child safety advocates are really calling out for more protections for kids in this space.”

New parental controls

The update introduces remote-accessible parental controls – a change from existing controls only accessible through the child’s account. Now, a parent or guardian can use their own Roblox account to manage and monitor their child’s gaming experience.

In addition to the already existing spend limits, which allow parents to manage how much real money a child spends on in-game purchases, parents can now also see their child’s friends list and set a hard limit on screen time for the game.

The new parental controls will also allow adults to restrict what content their child can access using four new categories to filter content: minimal, mild, moderate, and restricted.

Players younger than 9 years old will be allowed to access the minimal and moderate categories by default. Parents can enable the other two categories depending on what they feel is appropriate.

Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician and director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children’s Hospital, told NPR that though general age-based protocols are a step in the right direction, they’re not a catch-all answer to child safety online.

“It finally comes down to the parents’ understanding and judgment of how well their child takes responsibility and respect for themselves and others in that space,” Rich said, adding that Roblox is more of a social scene rather than an average game.

Restricting DMs

In a further attempt to mitigate inappropriate content and communication for their young gamers, Roblox players under 13 can no longer Direct Message anyone in the game. They will still be able to communicate with other players using platform chat, the public chat room in games where everyone can see messages online.

Kaufman said that as many as 50,000 messages could be going across the Roblox systems at any moment. The company uses enhanced AI to determine whether to let certain messages through and filter out messages that do not meet its standards.

The new built-in restriction comes after years of concern over children meeting adults in private, unrestricted chat rooms.

Carville has investigated multiple criminal indictments where children were harmed or even abducted after meeting a predator anonymously on Roblox. In one instance, a game developer was arrested for kidnapping after hiring an Uber to drive a 15-year-old girl he met on Roblox across state lines. In another, a registered sex offender solicited nude photos from an 8-year-old girl in exchange for Robux, the platform’s in-game currency.

“As [Roblox grows], it gets harder and harder to moderate the platform,” Carville told Here & Now. “Looking forward, parents really need to know what the risks are and what they’re comfortable with their children doing.”

Our clothes hold us, shaping our experience and understanding of life in ways both subtle and profound. It’s that feeling of studying a photo of an ancestor, marveling at their outfit, trying to decipher who they were through each stylistic detail. It’s the pain of losing a favorite shirt, the remorse of giving something away too soon or the release of donating once-loved garments, offering them to new people and new perspectives. Wearing preloved clothing carries memory forward and also calls us back.

In many ways, entering a thrift store, shopping secondhand online or even borrowing clothing from a friend is like engaging with one massive lost-and-found bin. Each shop or closet is an amalgamation of history, energy and life, merchandised for discovery. On a sunny October day, we traveled to Malibu with a trunk full of secondhand clothes. With each outfit, we remembered and unearthed a future informed by the past.

Sandrine wears Gianni Versace ostrich feather jacket from Aralda Vintage.

Sandrine wears waffle tops and Diesel hat from Mom n Dad Vintage.

Sandrine wears Vivienne Westwood Shearling Jacket from Aralda Vintage, Diesel pants, Mom n Dad Vintage.

Sandrine wears Brooke Callahan skirt.

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Sandrine wears Junya Watanabe dress from Aralda Vintage, Motocross pants and bracelet from Squaresville Vintage.

Casting: In Search Of
Production: Mere Studios
Model: Sandrine Malary
Grooming: Carla Perez
Photo assistant: Mekael Dawson
Production assistant: Ron Davison

Romany Williams is a writer, editor and stylist based on Vancouver Island, Canada. Her collaborators include SSENSE, Atmos, L.A. Times Image and more.