Roblox is an immersive platform focused on bringing people together to create, educate, and share with one another in meaningful ways. Our company mission is to connect one billion people with optimism and civility. As such, safety and civility have been the foundation of Roblox from the start, and become even more important as we grow and evolve.
Although safety is broadly understood, civility is often not. Civility is built on a foundation of safety. We have the opportunity to build one of the most civil immersive communities in the world. One that is Fair, Respectful, and provides a deep sense of Belonging. Civility is when people’s conduct and behaviors align with contextual expectations. Civility is complex because it depends on the context of who you are with, where you are etc. For instance, how you behave in a library is different from how you behave at a party.
The mission of the civility team is to empower people to navigate Roblox and the online world with civility and confidence, which requires the development of a set of skills and behaviors which help to create positive online interactions that are respectful, inclusive, and supportive. To achieve this, Roblox has a dedicated civility initiative focused on the following pillars:
- Lead – Continually innovating and amplifying our civility initiative for all people around the world
- Educate – Delivering educational resources driven by evidence-based data partnering with global experts in the areas of human development, mental health, and digital literacy
- Empower – Advocating for civility-by-design through product development and developer collaboration
For each of these three pillars, we are excited to share what we’ve learned in fostering civility and how we’re inspiring positive change to help people thrive on Roblox.
Lead: Civility starts with education and awareness
A foundational element of creating civil online spaces is ensuring that everyone has clear and easy-to-access information about the online spaces their friends and family interact in.
Research is foundational to create relevant and impactful strategies and content to empower kids, teens, parents, and caregivers. All of our civility education research is evidence-based, and conducted in partnership with leading global researchers, child development experts, and online well-being organizations.
Examples include our parent guides created with NAMLE, our “Into the Digital Future” podcast created in partnership with Sesame Workshop, and our Roblox Family Guide—all of which can be found on our resources page.
The next iteration of the internet is upon us, and our work is never done. We’re excited to announce the launch of our Civility microsite, civility.roblox.com, for anyone seeking advice about Roblox, using account controls, or more broadly, well-being and digital literacy advice. The site will contain updates from the latest research and Roblox resources as we work to amplify our civility education globally.
Educate: Delivering recommendations to improve online civility by partnering with experts
Our vision was that the online world could be safer and more civil than real life due to advancements in technology before the end of this decade. We collaborated with the Digital Wellness Lab (run by Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School), hosting a series of workshops to explore what needs to happen across society in Technology Innovation, Product Policy, and Education to make this hypothesis a reality.
Over 100 global experts in various fields relating to children’s welfare and development attended, including educators, researchers, clinicians, policymakers, advocacy groups, youth-support not-for-profit organizations, and technology companies. Our aim, in debating key issues and topics, was to develop guiding recommendations to educate technology leaders and policy-makers looking to build a more civil online world. Here are some proposals:
- Approach online civility from a youth-rights framework – ensure everything we build, design, and deploy has young people’s rights at the forefront.
- Involve youth meaningfully in the design of apps, platforms, policies, and resources.
- Commit across the tech and media industries to co-create and adhere to policies that are positively framed and encourage growth.
- Build onboarding processes that set expectations for behavior to support civility-focused norms in a fun and engaging way
- Design, deploy, and continually improve accessible civility resources.
These proposals were grounded in evidence about the state of civility in online spaces, and the effect of online platforms and media literacy on an individual’s wellbeing. You can read the full whitepaper here.
We’ve also recently wrapped up our latest research project with UK safety partner, Internet Matters. This work focuses on the digital experiences of neurodiverse teens, and includes key findings about their experience online. You can read the full report and access guides for neurodivergent young people and their parents here.
These are only a few of the ways that we partner across organizations to deliver educational resources for specific audiences.
Empower: Evolving new features to keep Roblox safe and civil
Every day, people come to Roblox to create, play, work, learn, and connect with each other in virtual user-generated experiences built by a global community of creators. Although we have strict Community Standards in order to help ensure that everyone feels safe and welcome, people may not realize they are unintentionally violating our policies.
To help educate people, we are testing a new feature that helps users know when they may be violating our Community Standards in chat with voice. To date, it has shown promising results, and we will continue to test and make feature improvements.
What’s next?
We will continue our work across these three pillars to help our community thrive. In this spirit, we will deepen our knowledge of how individual communities use Roblox and other online spaces; so we can ensure an inclusive, healthy, and positive community where everyone has the information they need to have a safe and civil online experience.