Roblox age verification raises privacy concerns

Gaming platform Roblox will now require all users to verify their age using its AI-powered facial age-estimation system or by uploading a government-issued ID to access its full range of features. Eliza Jacobs, the company’s vice president of safety product policy, told NBC News that the platform’s new video selfie age check process, which includes facial analysis, typically estimates ages “within 1.4 years” for users under 18.

However, the gaming company has not published any data showing how often children are misidentified as older users. Furthermore, Roblox’s age-verification measures raise key questions about user privacy and the workarounds users have found to circumvent the system. 

Is ticking a box to say you’re 16 or older enough? Roblox already requires users to complete an age check before they can use chat features. In April, it announced plans to sort players into age brackets. Users under 16 and 9 are placed under Roblox Select and Roblox Kids accounts, respectively. Those who do not undergo age checks have restricted access to chat and the content library.

• However, age checks can go wrong. Parents were recently found to be completing age checks on behalf of their children on Roblox, resulting in some children being classified as 21+ and gaining access to adult content. 
• In January, WIRED reported that age-verified Roblox accounts for minors as young as 9 were being sold on eBay for as little as $4, allowing bad actors to bypass the age-verification process by using pre-verified accounts. When an adult seeking children’s data, or a child seeking access to adult content, can simply purchase their way past the checks, the verification process ceases to be a barrier and becomes a commodity.  

Children have found ways to bypass facial age-estimation technology: A recent survey by Internet Matters revealed that 32% of children in the UK had already bypassed age checks by entering fake birthdates, using someone else’s login credentials, or even drawing fake moustaches.

• In a recent MediaNama roundtable discussion, a speaker pointed out a shortcoming in facial age-estimation, saying, “Someone put up a Barbie doll instead of their own face, and the AI guessed their age as 102.”
• Another speaker said they would not be comfortable with any company or government running facial recognition on a child. “I use DigiYatra quite frequently myself. But I’m trading convenience for this. We need to look at building resilience in the child against the harms, because the harms are not going away,” they said.
• Earlier this year, in April, the Australian eSafety Commissioner confirmed that children could easily bypass facial age-estimation technology deployed by social media platforms if they were within two years of turning 16. In many cases, platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube reportedly encouraged users to bypass security checks.
• In 2025, the UK-based…