By 2025, the regulation of minors' gaming is approaching a critical turning point. Recently, the leading global UGC gaming platform Roblox announced the launch of the "Trusted Connection" system for users aged 13 to 18, along with video-based age verification technology, enhanced privacy controls, and parental visualization monitoring tools. This security strategy upgrade is widely regarded as a structural response to government pressure, legal risks, and social reputation concerns. It also represents one of the new paradigms in the industry's shift towards quantifiable, verifiable, and traceable governance capabilities in addressing minors' behavioral safety issues.
The Category Ranking feature of FoxData's Dashboard indicates that Roblox's market performance is relatively strong.
1) Gaming behavior is increasingly becoming a form of "high externality activity" in the digital age, with negative impacts that are difficult to mitigate within the game environment itself;
2) The global policy landscape is shifting from "principle-based regulation" to "result-oriented regulation";
3) Gaming companies must go beyond content rating and anti-addiction technology, developing a comprehensive closed-loop system that includes real-time risk perception, tiered response, and public opinion management specifically targeting minors.
Minors face risks in gaming that extend far beyond mere addiction. Multiple global incidents demonstrate that gaming platforms not only expose youth to violent, sexual, or gambling-related content but also include:
Taking Roblox as an example, nearly half of its users are minors (under 18). The UGC ecosystem, with a large volume of content uploaded by external creators, is difficult to monitor promptly through traditional content rating methods. Additionally, open chat, private messaging, and voice communication among minors and between minors and adults create fertile ground for grooming, inappropriate social interactions, and other risks for underage users.
The Audience Persona feature of FoxData highlights the significant proportion of underage Roblox players.
By 2025, societal discourse regarding underage players primarily revolves around three key dimensions:
As the most directly affected social groups, they are becoming the primary advocates for implementing stricter time-limiting mechanisms. Their concerns extend beyond academic performance and physical and mental health, as they increasingly recognize that current anti-addiction measures are rendered ineffective by circumvention tactics.
In real life, gaps in platform responsibility, weak technical verification, and rampant black-market activities such as account leasing and boosting undermine their educational efforts. Addressing how to empower parents with substantive oversight rights, rather than relying solely on regulatory restrictions, is an urgent focus for current game governance policies.
Western countries are increasingly advocating for "Explainable Recommendation," requiring platforms to clarify why minors are exposed to certain content, with rules aligned to legal and ethical standards.
Merely implementing "anti-addiction systems" or "adult content filtering" no longer meets public expectations. The identification of high-risk accounts (such as mixed-age high-interaction profiles), behavioral profiling (like repeated addition of strangers), and content risk grading are emerging as new focal points for societal scrutiny of large-scale gaming platforms.
Currently, many gaming platforms confidently claim "legislative compliance," with features like real-name authentication, transaction alerts, and social content blocking gradually implemented. However, these measures are largely passive responses, aimed at compliance rather than capability development. This approach falls short of three regulatory expectations:
This demands higher standards in data processing, AI-driven risk control architecture, and real-time content quality assessment systems, representing a structural upgrade from mere regulatory compliance to capability building in game security governance.
The future of game governance is shifting from a model of "passive compliance" to an era of "capability-driven" regulation. Roblox's recent initiatives targeting underage users—such as "Trusted Connection," "Video Verification," and "Social Risk Control"—send a clear industry signal:
✅ The trillion-dollar gaming and user-generated content platforms are entering a comprehensive Risk Control 3.0 phase, characterized by identification as the starting point, models as the core, and response as the closed loop.
✅ "Anti-addiction" measures are evolving beyond mere time restrictions, and "Real-Name Authentication" extends beyond simple ID number entry. Society and regulatory bodies are now expecting platforms to address deeper questions:
– Who are the players?
– What are they playing?
– Who are they interacting with?
– Are there risks involved?
– Is the system aware of these risks, or only alerted after incidents occur? This reflects a reconstruction of public governance logic and an elevation of data technology responsibilities.
In simple terms, the question for the future is not "Do I have a mechanism?" but "Can I identify who is most likely to encounter issues before problems arise?"
FoxData observes that more leading companies are proactively establishing specialized projects such as "Internal Content Risk Response Teams," "AI Anomaly User Profiling," and "Behavior and Content Modeling Workflows" to enhance platform integration of perception, decision-making, and response capabilities.
This is not only about protecting minors but also about safeguarding trustworthy interactions, brand assets, and industry integrity.
📌 The trend is clear: future growth will favor companies that develop "closed-loop governance capabilities" first.
Now is the time for every developer, product manager, and data team to ask themselves three critical questions:
👉 What types of risk behaviors have we identified?
👉 How quickly can our system respond?
👉 Is compliance and risk control aimed at regulatory oversight or supporting business growth? In today’s era of digital security reaching a "capability inflection point," answering these questions determines whether you are merely reactive or becoming an industry leader.
FoxData will continue to assist developers in building trustworthy safeguards through technology, maintaining responsibility at the forefront of industry shifts.
Visit FoxData to explore our data risk control capabilities in [Demographics] and [user behavior analysis], designed to empower developers.
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