Did your child open Roblox this week and find the chat box gone, the Friends list thinner, and a game they played for months missing from the catalog? If so, nothing is broken — the account has almost certainly been sorted into one of Roblox's age-based tiers, and each tier hides a specific set of social features until someone takes the right step.
This guide walks through exactly which features disappear on Roblox Kids and Roblox Select accounts, why each one vanished, and which ones a parent can actually turn back on. Keep in mind that some of these features are locked by policy rather than by settings, so the fastest path is knowing which kind of lock you are looking at before you start tapping through menus.
Roblox Kids covers ages 5–8, Roblox Select covers ages 9–15, and standard accounts are for age-checked users 16 and older. Each tier unlocks a different mix of chat, friends, links, and games.
Why Social Features Suddenly Disappeared
Roblox launched Roblox Kids and Roblox Select globally on June 16, 2026, after an initial rollout in Australia, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Accounts are placed into a tier automatically based on age, and there is no opt-in screen — the experience simply changes the next time your child logs in.
That said, the tier is only half the story. The other half is whether the account has completed an age check, and that single detail decides more about chat than the birthday ever did.
We covered the launch itself in our breakdown of Roblox Kids and Roblox Select going global. This post picks up where that one stops: the hands-on question of what is hidden and how families restore it.
The Two Locks: Age Tier And Age Check
Every account now carries two labels at once. The first is its tier — Kids, Select, or standard — and the second is whether the age behind it was checked or simply typed in at signup.
Roblox treats a self-declared birthday very differently from a verified one. A user who only entered a birthdate gets placed into Kids or Select with chat fully disabled, regardless of the age they entered.
A self-declared birthday puts an account in Kids or Select with chat off at any age. Passing an age check by government ID or Facial Age Estimation is what makes chat available at all.
Roblox offers two age-check methods: government ID verification or Facial Age Estimation through the device camera. According to the company, the face-based estimate has been certified by third-party labs at a Mean Absolute Error within approximately 1.4 years for users under 18, and the captured images are deleted after processing.
For a step-by-step look at the verification flow itself, see our guide to Roblox age verification. What matters here is the order of operations: verify first, then adjust settings, because no parental toggle can switch on chat for an unverified account.
What Each Account Tier Hides
The table below lines up the hidden social features against each tier. Note that "parent can enable" assumes the child's account has passed an age check and a parent account is linked.
| Feature | Roblox Kids (5–8) | Roblox Select (9–15) | Standard (16+, age-checked) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text chat (unverified account) | Off, cannot be enabled | Off, cannot be enabled | Not applicable |
| Text chat (age-checked account) | Off by default; parent can enable | Unlocks gradually by age and region; parent can adjust | Fully enabled |
| Who chat reaches | Trusted Friends and similar-age users | Trusted Friends and similar-age users | Broader audience |
| Social media links on profiles and game pages | Hidden | Hidden | Visible |
| Roblox Moments (clip sharing) | Unavailable | Unavailable | Available |
| Hangout and free-form drawing games | Excluded from catalog | Excluded from catalog | Available, except Restricted (18+) |
| Game content ratings | Minimal and Mild only | Minimal, Mild, and Moderate | All except Restricted |
All of this adds up to a simple rule of thumb. Rows that say "parent can enable" are settings problems you can solve tonight, while rows that say "hidden" or "excluded" are policy limits that no setting will change until the user ages into the next tier.
Where Chat Went — And How To Bring It Back
Chat is the feature that disappears most visibly, so it is the right place to start. The fix depends entirely on which of three situations your child is in.
Situation 1: The Account Was Never Age-Checked
This cause reaches the widest group of children, because it applies at every age. An unverified 12-year-old who chatted on Roblox for years loses chat entirely until the account completes an age check.
The fix is to run the age check from the child's account settings, using either an ID or the Facial Age Estimation prompt. Once the account is verified, it moves into the correct tier with that tier's default chat settings.
Situation 2: A Verified Roblox Kids Account (Ages 5–8)
Even after an age check, chat on a Kids account stays off by default. A linked parent can switch on text chat through Parental Controls, but that chat remains limited to Trusted Friends and users in a similar age group.
Remember that this is text chat only. Voice chat follows its own, stricter eligibility rules, which we break down in our Roblox voice chat guide.
Situation 3: A Verified Roblox Select Account (Ages 9–15)
Select accounts unlock chat gradually as the user ages, and availability also varies by region. In other words, two 11-year-olds in different countries may see different defaults, which explains a lot of confusing playground comparisons.
Parents keep the ability to change chat settings until the child turns 16. Text filters and automatic chat rephrasing stay active at all times, and Roblox says all conversations are monitored for child exploitation.
On a verified Select account, chat opens up gradually between ages 9 and 15 and varies by region. A linked parent can change chat settings in either direction until the child turns 16.
The Restore Walkthrough, Step By Step
Here's the sequence that clears every settings-based lock in a single sitting. Menu labels shift slightly between the mobile app, desktop, and console, so look for the section names below rather than an exact path.
- Confirm the account's tier. A Roblox Kids account displays a visually distinct blue background, which tells you at a glance that you are dealing with the 5–8 tier.
- Run the age check on the child's account. Choose ID verification or Facial Age Estimation; until this step is done, chat cannot be enabled no matter what else you change.
- Set up your own parent account and age-check it. Several parent permissions, including the automatic Trusted Friend upgrade, require the parent account itself to be age-checked.
- Link your account to your child's. Linking is what opens Parental Controls, including chat settings, friend list review, and game permissions.
- Add yourself to your child's Friends list. Once the accounts are linked and you are age-checked, Roblox upgrades a linked parent from Friend to Trusted Friend automatically.
- Adjust chat in Parental Controls. On a Kids account, switch text chat on; on a Select account, review the age-based defaults and tighten or loosen them.
- Approve Trusted Friend requests. For children under 13, every Trusted Friend request routes to the parent for approval.
Once those seven steps are done, every feature that a setting can restore has been restored. Anything still missing at that point is a tier-level policy limit, which the next sections cover.
Wrong tier after the face check: Facial Age Estimation carries a margin of error, so a young-looking 10-year-old can land in Roblox Kids. A linked parent can correct the child's age once after the initial check, and a valid government ID can override the estimate.
Where The Friends List Went
Families who remember the "Connections" label will notice it is gone. Roblox renamed Connections back to Friends and Trusted Connections to Trusted Friends in April 2026, a change we covered in our piece on Roblox bringing back Friends and expanding Trusted Friends.
The bigger shift is that chat now flows mainly through Trusted Friends — people a child knows in real life — plus users in a similar age group. A regular Friend still appears in the list, but on a Kids or Select account that connection alone does not open a chat channel.
How Trusted Friends Get Added
For users 13 and older, Trusted Friends can be added directly through QR code scanning or contact importing. For users under 13, the request requires explicit parental consent.
If both children are under 13, both sets of parents need to approve. This dual-consent rule is the reason a request between two classmates can sit pending for days — one parent approved, and the other has not opened Parental Controls yet.
Chat on Kids and Select accounts reaches Trusted Friends and similar-age users. Under 13, every Trusted Friend request needs parent approval, and both families must approve when both kids are under 13.
Features No Setting Can Restore
Some hidden features are not hidden by a toggle at all. These stay locked on Kids and Select accounts no matter how Parental Controls are configured, and knowing that saves a lot of fruitless searching.
The policy-locked features include but are not limited to:
- Social media links. Only age-verified users 16 and older can share or even view social media links on profiles, game pages, Community pages, and the Creator Hub. That means a 14-year-old on a Select account cannot see a developer's social link on a game page.
- Roblox Moments. The gameplay clip feature is not available on Kids or Select accounts at launch, so users under 16 cannot create, share, or interact with clips. Roblox has not said whether this is permanent.
- Hangout and drawing games. Games built around social hangout mechanics, free-form drawing, or sensitive subject matter are excluded from the Kids and Select catalogs entirely.
- In-game one-to-one chat. Games built around private one-to-one chat inside the experience are also excluded from the younger catalogs.
All of these lift on their own when the user reaches the standard tier at 16 and completes an age check. Until then, the honest answer to "how do I turn it back on" is that you cannot — and that is by design, not a bug.
Social media links, Roblox Moments, and hangout or drawing games stay locked on all Kids and Select accounts. No parental setting restores them; they unlock at 16 with an age check.
Where Favorite Games Went
A missing game often gets mistaken for a missing social feature, especially when the game was where a child chatted with friends. Every game in the Kids and Select catalogs has passed an additional review beyond Roblox's standard moderation, and the catalog is filtered by content maturity label.
Roblox Kids accounts see only games rated Minimal or Mild, while Select accounts add games rated Moderate. Roblox says the "vast majority" of popular games remain available, and confirmed U.S. titles include Driving Empire, Grow a Garden, and the How to Train Your Dragon experience.
Parents can still allow or block specific games until the child turns 16. Keep in mind that "allow" works only within the catalog the tier already permits — it will not pull an excluded hangout game back in.
If your child's go-to game vanished, our roundup of the best Roblox games is a good place to find replacements. Plenty of our strategy guides, including Adopt Me tips and Bloxburg tips, cover games that families play together.
The Other Parental Controls Worth Setting While You're There
Once your account is linked, it is worth spending five extra minutes on the rest of the panel. Controls shift from parent-managed to teen-managed as the child ages, so what you can change depends on how old your child is.
Until a child turns 13, a linked parent can:
- Review the friend list. See every Friend and Trusted Friend on the account, and remove any you do not recognize.
- Block or report contacts. Act on a specific user directly from the parent side rather than relying on the child to do it.
- Approve or decline Trusted Friend requests. Every request lands with you first.
- Set screen-time and spending limits. Cap daily playtime and Robux spending from the same panel.
Until the child turns 16, a parent retains chat settings and game allow-and-block controls. After that, controls transfer to the user, which mirrors how most families already handle digital independence.
Furthermore, playing together is one of the most effective ways to see how these settings feel from the inside. Roblox's shared-play tools for families are covered in our look at Roblox's Family Zone.
Why Roblox Built It This Way
The design choice behind all of this is clear: Roblox is tying social access to verified age rather than to a typed birthday. Self-declared age has long worked on the honor system, and the company has made verification the gate for every conversation a child can have.
Of course, that trade-off creates friction, especially for older kids who lost chat overnight. Still, every one of those frictions has a known fix or a known end date, which is more than the old system could promise.
For the broader context on how chat rules have evolved, see our earlier analysis of Roblox rethinking chat for gameplay and civility. You can also browse our full Roblox coverage from the Endsights homepage, and our AI transparency page explains how we research and compile guides like this one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a parent turn on chat for a 6-year-old on Roblox?
Yes, once the child's account passes an age check and a parent account is linked. Chat on a Roblox Kids account is text only and reaches just Trusted Friends and users in a similar age group.
Why can't my 14-year-old see a game's social media links?
Roblox restricts social media links to age-verified users 16 and older. Select accounts cannot share or view them on profiles, game pages, Community pages, or the Creator Hub.
What if Facial Age Estimation puts my child in the wrong tier?
A linked parent can correct the child's age once after the initial check. Government ID verification can also override the face-based estimate, which carries an error margin of about 1.4 years.
Why is my child's Trusted Friend request still pending?
When both children are under 13, both sets of parents must approve the request in Parental Controls. Until the second family approves, the request stays pending and chat does not open.
Will Roblox Moments come back for users under 16?
Roblox Moments is unavailable on Kids and Select accounts at launch, and Roblox has not said whether that is permanent. For now, clip sharing unlocks only on standard accounts at 16 and up.
