It's undeniable that, in this day and age, online safety for young people should be of the utmost importance. After many instances of catfishing, perpetual problems with cyberbullying, and a collective mental health crisis, world governments are looking to intervene from the top. The pressure being applied to social media and other places where you can chat, like Roblox's chat function, is enormous, and Roblox has taken action by requiring age-verification globally. The question is: does it actually work? Or will it just sink the platform in its entirety?
We've all heard about Australia's policy of banning under-16s from using social media, and the UK's age-verification requirements are a sign of the times. Roblox has followed the lead of these countries, implementing its own safety features. While I'm glad to see that people in positions of power, both in government and in companies, are beginning to wake up to the dangers of the online world, the consequences of this move have been pretty dire: Roblox is… kind of dying, and by that I mean struggling with lower traffic. Talk online says it's mainly because of a process it describes as 'Facial Age Estimation'. This appears to be a vague term thrown around on Roblox's website, but when you look deeper, you realize it involves the app gaining access to the camera to scan your face.
If there's one thing people universally hate in this world, it's the storage of personal data. The idea that the government or a company is keeping scans of our faces and using them to sell to other parties is concerning. No matter how much organizations like Roblox promise they won't do anything with the images, people are understandably worried about data breaches. This is alongside other major issues - the software is AI-powered and thus doesn't work reliably, with many reporting that they, as an adult, have been marked as a child and vice versa. This is alongside many young people openly admitting online to having their parents or older siblings do their face scans for them.
Understandably, players are reluctant to use the systems in their intended ways. Roblox itself reports that over 50% of its user base has completed the check successfully - which, if you think about it, isn't really a flex. All that says is that 50% fewer people are using the chat function, and we gamers out there know how important it is to be able to communicate with teammates, as well as express ourselves online. Player numbers show the opposite of what we'd expect from the holiday period, with traffic actually down compared to November. Players are beginning to drift away, bored with the lack of activity and frustrated that they can no longer roleplay, and who can blame them?
Even worse, the whole thing has opened up a strange black market of people selling 'adult verified' accounts, too, which not only curtails the success of the age-verification, but additionally poses greater risks to vulnerable players online, opening them up to scams and other dangers. If things continue down this path, Roblox might end up getting banned altogether, and then the platform will really start to have problems. What might work better to keep kids online safe, you may ask? Well, I suppose that's the literal million-dollar question.