Quick answer: Go to your child's Roblox account, open Settings, then Parental Controls, and set a 4-digit PIN. Set voice chat to No one or Friends only, set text chat to Friends only, and review the friends list. Since January 2026, Roblox requires a facial age scan before users can chat at all, sorting each account into an age band with its own limits. The controls are real. They are also incomplete. This guide walks through both.

Roblox parental controls changed substantially in 2026. Until January this year, the main safety features were a PIN-protected settings page and content-maturity filters. They worked, but they assumed parents already knew the settings existed. Most did not.

The face-scan update rewrote the system. Every user now passes a facial age estimation, or shows a government ID if 13 or older, before accessing any chat feature. The scan sorts users into age bands, and each band has its own default permissions for who can talk to whom. For parents, this means two things: the built-in controls are stronger than they were a year ago, and the gaps that remain are harder to close with settings alone. This guide covers the full setup, the new age-band rules, and the one thing controls still cannot do: tell you what is actually being said.

Do this first: 5-minute checklist

  1. Log into your child's Roblox account and open Settings, then Parental Controls.

  2. Set a 4-digit Parental PIN your child does not know. This locks every setting below.

  3. Check the account's registered birth date. If it says your child is older than they are, that is the first thing to fix.

  4. Under Communication, set Experience Voice Chat and Party Voice Chat to No one (under 13) or Friends only (13 and older).

  5. Set Experience Chat, Direct Chat, and Party Chat (text) to Friends only.

  6. Set Friend Requests to Friends of Friends or No one.

  7. Review the friends list together. Ask about any name you do not recognize.

  8. Link your own Roblox account as a parent account (optional but recommended). This moves the controls to your side.

If you only do one thing, do step 2. The PIN is what stops your child from undoing every other change the moment you walk away.

How Roblox parental controls work

Roblox gives parents a settings page that controls communication, content, and spending. Every option behind the Parental PIN stays locked until someone enters the code. Here is what each section covers.

Communication settings

This is where most of the risk lives. Roblox splits communication into five separate toggles:

Each toggle can be set to Everyone, Friends and Followers, Friends, or No one. For most families, Friends only is the right baseline for text, and No one or Friends only for voice. The more restrictive you set these, the smaller the pool of people who can reach your child.

Content maturity

Roblox rates each experience on a maturity scale. Parental controls let you restrict which maturity levels your child can access. If your child is under 13, the strictest setting blocks most content designed for teens and up. This does not filter what people say in chat. It only controls which games your child can enter.

Spending limits

You can cap how much Robux your child can spend per month or require approval for every purchase. This matters for safety as well as budgeting: gift-giving (sending Robux or rare items) is a documented grooming tactic. If your child is receiving gifts from someone you do not know, that is worth a conversation.

Parent account linking

Roblox now supports linking a parent account to your child's account. Once linked, you manage settings from your own login rather than your child's, and you verify your identity with a government ID or credit card. This is the strongest setup because it takes the controls out of your child's hands entirely. For a full walkthrough of Roblox's voice-specific settings, see our Roblox voice chat safety guide.

What the face-scan update changed

In January 2026, Roblox made a facial age check mandatory for all users worldwide. Before this, chat was available to anyone who entered a birth date of 13 or older. Now every account must pass the scan before any communication feature unlocks.

The scan uses a vendor called Persona. The user holds up their phone or device camera, the system estimates their age, and the image is deleted immediately. Users 13 and older can verify with a government ID instead. After the check, each account is placed into one of six age bands:

Trusted Connections

If two age-checked users (both 13 or older) confirm they know each other by scanning a QR code or importing contacts, they become Trusted Connections. Trusted Connections get less-filtered chat, even across age groups. Roblox designed this for real-life friends who want to talk freely, but it is worth asking your child who they have marked as "trusted" and whether they actually know that person offline.

For a deeper walkthrough of how the age scan works, its accuracy, and its known failure modes, see our Roblox facial age verification explainer.

Where the controls still have gaps

The 2026 controls are the strongest Roblox has ever shipped. They are not complete. These are the gaps that settings alone cannot close.

Account ages can be wrong

If your child entered a fake birth year when creating the account, Roblox treats them as older. This is the single most common reason children end up with permissions they should not have. A 10-year-old registered as 15 lands in the teen band, gets voice chat, and can be contacted by 16 and 17 year olds. Fixing the birth date is step one. If the field is locked, submit a request through Roblox Support with proof of the child's real age.

Shared accounts

When an older sibling or parent completes the age check on a shared device, a younger child can log into that verified account and inherit permissions meant for someone older. Roblox has no way to tell who is holding the device after verification. If your household shares tablets or computers, check which account is signed in.

The face scan has a margin of error

Persona's facial age estimation has a reported mean absolute error of about 1.4 years for users under 18. A mature-looking 11-year-old can occasionally be placed in the 13-to-15 band. The scan is one layer, not a guarantee. For the full analysis, see our age verification explainer.

Text chat reaches younger children than voice does

Voice chat is gated at 13-plus, but text chat is available to 9-to-12-year-olds with filtering. Most predator contact starts in text, often with a line like "add me on Discord" or "let's talk somewhere else." If your child is between 9 and 12, text is where the risk sits, and the text filter does not catch social engineering. Our guide to what it means when someone asks your child to move to another app covers this pattern in detail.

Controls tell you nothing about what is being said

The Parental PIN, the age bands, the communication toggles: all of these are on-off switches. They restrict or allow. None of them show you what was said. Roblox does not offer a chat-history viewer for parents, and voice chat is not recorded. If your child is chatting with friends-only text and friends-only voice, you are trusting the friends list. That brings us to monitoring.

Age-specific recommendations

Under 9

Ages 9 to 12

For a detailed walkthrough of the under-13 voice situation, including what to do if your child has already bypassed the age check, see our guide to Roblox voice chat for under-13s.

Ages 13 and older

Can you see what your child does on Roblox?

Roblox parental controls let you restrict and block. They do not let you see what is being said. Here is what the available tools actually cover.

Tool

What it does on Roblox

Platform

Limitation

Roblox built-in controls

Restrict or disable voice and text chat, limit spending, gate content maturity. No visibility into conversations.

All

No monitoring. Restrict-or-allow only. No chat history for parents.

Bark

Text chat monitoring (child's side only, Android).

Android only

No voice on any platform. Text is one-sided and inconsistent on Roblox.

Aura / Kidas

Voice and text on PC games.

Windows only

No mobile. Cloud-based processing. No iOS or Android.

Halo

Runs on-device and alerts you only when it detects a genuine danger pattern (grooming, bullying, self-harm) in voice or in-game text chat. It monitors the voice chat and the text chat, and it never records a thing.

iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows

No Android yet. No console. Audio is processed on-device and never uploaded or stored; only the resulting alert is sent to you. 7-day free trial, then US$99.99/yr (about US$8/mo billed annually) or US$12.99/mo.

The honest summary: Roblox controls and a safety layer do different jobs. Controls decide what your child can and cannot do. A safety layer tells you when something goes wrong in the conversations you have decided to allow. Neither replaces the other.

If your child is under 13 with voice correctly off and text set to Friends only, the built-in controls are doing most of the work. The safety layer becomes more relevant once your child turns 13, enables voice, and starts talking to a wider group of people. For a full comparison of voice safety tools across every game and platform, see our voice chat safety guide.

What to say to your child about Roblox

For younger children (under 10)

For pre-teens (10 to 12)

For teens (13 and older)

For the specific warning signs that something has already gone wrong, see our guide to grooming warning signs in gaming. And if your child mentions Discord, Snapchat, or any other app that someone asked them to move to, our Discord parental controls guide covers the settings and risks on that platform.

Frequently asked questions

How do I set up Roblox parental controls?

Log into your child's Roblox account and go to Settings, then Parental Controls. Set a 4-digit PIN your child does not know. Under Communication, set voice chat to No one or Friends only and text chat to Friends only. Set a content maturity limit and restrict friend requests. For the strongest setup, link your own Roblox account as a parent account so that controls live on your side. The full walkthrough takes about five minutes.

Are Roblox parental controls enough to keep kids safe?

They are stronger than before, especially after the 2026 face-scan update that sorts every user into an age band. But they are restrict-or-allow switches. They tell Roblox what to block. They do not tell you what your child said or what was said to them. Text chat still reaches 9-to-12-year-olds even with voice off, and account ages can be wrong if a child entered a fake birthday. Pair the controls with regular friends-list reviews and conversations about what to watch for.

Can I see what my child says on Roblox?

Not through Roblox itself. Roblox parental controls restrict or block communication but do not offer a chat-history viewer for parents. Voice chat is not recorded by Roblox, so there is no voice log to review. Third-party tools like Bark (Android, text only) and Halo (iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows, voice and text) can provide some visibility, but no single tool covers every platform and channel.

What are the Roblox age groups after the 2026 face-scan update?

After passing the facial age check, users are sorted into one of six bands: under 9, 9 to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, 18 to 20, and 21 and up. Each band has default communication permissions. Under 9 has chat off unless a parent consents. 9 to 12 gets limited filtered text but no voice. 13 to 15 can use voice and text within their age group and adjacent groups. Adults are blocked from contacting anyone under 16 by default.

What changed with Roblox parental controls in 2026?

The biggest change is mandatory facial age verification for all users, launched in January 2026. Before this, anyone who entered a birthday of 13 or older could access chat. Now every account must pass a face scan or show a government ID. Roblox also introduced six age bands with default communication limits, Trusted Connections for verified real-life contacts, and parent account linking with ID or credit-card verification.

Does Bark monitor Roblox voice chat?

No. Bark can monitor Roblox text chat on Android devices, covering only the child's side of the conversation. It does not monitor voice chat on any platform. On iOS, Bark does not monitor Roblox at all.

How do I set a parental PIN on Roblox?

Log into your child's Roblox account, go to Settings, then Parental Controls, and create a 4-digit PIN. Choose a code your child does not know. Without a PIN, your child can change every restriction you set from the same menu. The PIN is what makes the rest of the controls stick.

Sources

This guide is updated as Roblox changes its safety features. Last reviewed August 2026.