Dina Lamdany

My name’s Dina Lamdany. I work at Roblox as a product manager. A product manager means I work with a team of engineers to build product features, but I also work closely with designers who think about how people can use technology in an intuitive way. I work with our legal team and our policy team to think about the right rules of the road for our youngest users, in particular. I focus a lot on kids under 13 and also teens. I have both a technology background and a legal background, and I came to this work thinking through the regulatory and policy challenges in this space. Not only parents and families are concerned; we see regulators across the world thinking carefully about how to keep kids safe online.

 

And so, a lot of what brought me to this work was an interest in that. But I think the more time I spend at Roblox—I've been here about two and a half years—the more I realize how important it is to get this right, because we have a generation of kids growing up fully online and much of how they think about interaction is influenced by what they see online. That motivates me to make our digital world safe—but not just safe; a place where you can grow up and grow into yourself, not just a baseline of safety.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

I don't often research before interviews because I like the freshness of seeing who I'm talking to. But on this occasion, I went to my young adults and asked, "What do you want me to know? What should I ask? What's important?" Diane and I have kids old enough that they were exposed to technology before we understood Internet safety. My son Will, in his twenties, will say, "Mom, there's not a kid my age who hasn't been traumatized by the Internet." That was true for early adopters before we as parents had a clue. It's just the reality of what kids were exposed to.

 

And what they told me is how they've seen the shift in Roblox—where it was in terms of safety and where it is now. They see it from their lens, so I'm curious what that shift has been. As an industry, what are you seeing? What led to the shift beyond fear of reprisal or litigation? What was happening from the lens of—you have 85 million users—it's huge, right?

 

Dina Lamdany

Totally. That's a great question. A little history: Roblox is almost 20 years old. It's been around for quite some time, but during COVID it saw huge growth. We came onto the radar and became mainstream in the last five to ten years. Safety has been important since our founding. We joke that our CEO Dave was involved in the original moderation, but when you're a company at the scale we are now—and we've been massive for about five years—it becomes a different ballgame.

 

When thinking about safety and our responsibility as a platform, we take it seriously, and we're not perfect. In the last five years, our developer and user community has really started to see it. This last year we made at least 40 updates. We don't talk about all of them, but we post many to our developer community: "Hey, we're making this change." Sometimes it hurts developers—it makes things harder for them, like respecting user privacy or limiting access to certain data, which we believe we should do. Our developer community has been very supportive because they understand its importance. It's remarkable your kids understand it, too. We didn't expect kids to grasp these fairly complex changes.

 

But we have seen a lot, and I think you're asking why we've changed. I don't think we've changed our orientation—safety has always been our orientation—but we take our responsibility as such a large platform very seriously. Of course, there are more eyes on us, especially regulatory eyes. But there are many things we do for safety that have nothing to do with regulatory concern; it's really about making sure this platform is safe. That also comes from our business interests: it's not good for our business if this isn't safe for kids. So we really think that keeping it safe must be the number-one priority.

 

Diane Dempster

I'm laughing because my 25-year-old said, "If I had a 9-year-old, I wouldn't." He's a big gamer and still has that perspective. A lot of parents get into this because we're so scared—we're nervous about this happening, nervous about that happening. We end up in black and white—yes, no, never, always—since there's scary stuff out there. What do you say to parents who think, "I need to say no, because you can't guarantee one hundred percent safety"?

 

Dina Lamdany

Parents come with these concerns, and I want to validate that. It makes sense for parents to be concerned about what their kids are doing, both online and offline, because parents really want to take care of their kids. Kids are going to be online, and there are benefits to engaging online—hanging out with friends, being creative, playing, learning with a platform like Roblox, which is foreign to many parents, the first thing I tell parents is to sign up themselves and regularly spend time on the platform with their kids, just experiencing what they're experiencing and asking questions—not scary questions like "Is something bad happening?" but curious ones like, "Why do you like this game? What appeals to you? Who are you talking to?" If something changes—for example, they start talking to people you haven't heard about, or they switch from the game they've played for a year to something that looks off—you'll be better equipped to talk to them. It's important to have realistic expectations that your kid will learn and have positive experiences online, but you need to know enough about what they're doing to notice if anything weird happens. So, I would tell a parent of a 9-year-old, "Do you want help setting up an account? It's easy. I can link your account to your kid's in five to ten minutes. Here are some parental controls you can use. But even if you never use a single parental control, let's get in a game together and see what your kid is playing, and go from there.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

So many directions. Our guest is Dina Lamdany from Roblox, and we're talking about internet safety and how parents can have constructive, engaging conversations with their kids. Dina, before the break, you said to "Go play with your kids online," because that's where their friends are and how we learn their interests. Diane and I always say, "Don't demonize technology; befriend it and normalize it so you can stay in conversation without being shut out." I heard that clearly before the break, we mentioned our kids are now 25 to 36—they're older—but Roblox crosses all ages.

 

And so, you know, Diane, your son is saying, "I'm not sure I would let him use it." My son is saying, "Well, they've made some changes lately, actually." So let's talk about what's different now, because my oldest kid is actually responsible, as I'm not so sure, Mom. And then my son was like, "No, no, no, actually this is what they're doing. And now you have to show government IDs," and he was very clear on the difference. So let's help parents see what is being done now to protect the safety of younger kids. We're not talking about young adults at this point; we're really talking about kids underage.

 

Dina Lamdany

Yeah, so Roblox made some sweeping changes in November, which I'll tell you about, and we also did a number of updates more recently to add on. Roblox had parental controls for a long time, but last November we made both really big updates to how our parental controls worked, as well as our policies for users under 13. That's how we really think about kids: under 13 are kids, and 13 and above are teens. Some of the changes we made in November that we think of as rather substantive are: parents now have their own accounts that they link to their kids, and in order to be a parent on Roblox, you have to verify yourself using a government ID or a credit card authorization.

 

There's quite a high bar for being a parent on Roblox. Once you verify yourself, you can manage your kids' accounts through parental controls. You can control their privacy settings, their chat settings, see their screen time, set screen time limits, set spending limits, sign up for spending notifications—it's a whole suite of tools you have access to once you link your account as a parent. We also changed a number of our policies for kids under 13. One of the biggest changes is users under 13 are no longer allowed to use our direct messaging tool outside of games. That means they can't do one-to-one or small-group chat outside of games. Inside games, if they want a one-to-one message—say to a teammate—they have to get parental consent. They send a request to that linked parent, who has to say yes. It's a fairly high bar, and the parent really has to know what's going on inside that game. That chat is filtered very heavily, and so we believe this is a big improvement for kids under 13 in terms of safety.

 

We also added restrictions for our youngest users—kids under nine. We think about the full under-13 group, but our youngest users need even more protection. So we added restrictions on the content they can access. We have content-maturity labels: minimal, mild, moderate, and restricted, with attributes like level of violence. Our youngest users can only access minimal and mild by default. To access moderate, they need parental consent and a linked parent to update settings. Restricted content is only available to users verified by government ID as over 17, so only adults. All those changes were made in November, and we've been excited to see adoption by parents so far.

 

So we launched three additional features: friend blocking, game blocking, and per-experience screen time. I use the words game and experience interchangeably—our formal name is Experiences—but parents might think of it as a game. Friend blocking means that once parents link their accounts, they can see their kids' friend lists at any time. We think that's a great moment to have a conversation with your child about who these people are. People use usernames and display names that might not make sense to a parent, like Bluebird22. You can ask, "Who is Bluebird22 and how do you know them? Did you meet at school?" If you're not comfortable with that person, you can block them right from the dashboard or report them if you think they're violating policy. That's how friend blocking works.

 

And so, you know, Diane, parents told us again and again they wanted that capability. We built it, and we hope it's helpful. We then built game blocking—or, as we call it, per-experience screen time—where you can proactively search for a game you've heard about from another parent and block it so your child can't play it. Or you can use our per-experience screen time feature, which shows you your child's top experiences, where they're spending most of their time. If you see something they're spending too much time in that doesn't feel right, you can block that experience so they can't access it. This is where it becomes helpful to spend some time in the games with your kids, so you can get context around, "Oh, this makes sense—super appropriate for my kid," versus, "This seems a little mature—better for their older sibling."

 

Diane Dempster

Well, the piece you're not quite speaking to that I'm most curious about is: you can control your kids' circle, but there's engagement with the broader universe. I dunno if I'm using the right language, but there are hundreds of other people in there at the same time. Even if they're not friends, there's interaction. I'm curious how that ties in—Stranger danger pops into my mind. When we were kids, that was the big thing. How does that play here?

 

Dina Lamdany

Roblox is an interactive platform, which has tons of benefits—you can explore universes and engage with educational, fascinating content—but sometimes things can go wrong. We think about safety in a few dimensions. First, as I mentioned, we filter all chat. All chat in an experience is filtered very strictly. It's not perfect, but it's much stricter than unfiltered chat. We focus on blocking any sexual language or sharing of PII, and we prevent anyone from taking a conversation off-platform.

Second, we have very strict content policies: not only is sexual content disallowed, but even romantic or flirtatious gestures in a game are banned. We have moderation systems for both chat and in-game content. Nothing is perfect, and we continue iterating and improving our systems.

If I were a concerned parent, I'd also spend some time in individual games to see who's there. We know some games attract younger users while others attract older users. It makes sense to check: "Is this game full of little kids, and my child is maybe too old for it?" or "Is it full of older users?" You can often tell by gameplay because motor-skill demands differ by age group.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

So I'm really curious, and we've got to watch our time. We don't have much time left, but I appreciate what you've laid out. What are some of the controls now in place? The chat feature is exactly what my son mentioned—the ability to protect kids from strangers who might not have honorable intent. I'm curious: Diane and I come from a collaborative lens with our kids. As I hear you talking, I'm so glad I have older kids, because you're asking parents to invest a lot of time to understand how to manage and monitor this. I'm not criticizing—you're wise—but as a parent, it sounds daunting. What guidance or conversation would you have for parents? How do we involve our kids without becoming enforcers? Or handle the "I don't have time" concern? Diane, did I capture that well, or would you phrase it differently?

 

Diane Dempster

Yeah, no, and I think it's—Roblox is unique in this—because it's not just a game. You go in, and there are millions and millions of options. Literally millions. So, how do we prioritize? It's overwhelming even to think about stepping in there as a parent, let alone playing with them or monitoring them. You have to get to a level of confidence.

 

Dina Lamdany

I think you're asking a really great question, because we see parents are extremely busy. Anyone with a child is always on the go—grocery pickups, school runs, everything. Our goal is that Roblox is safe by default, even if parents aren't involved. That's why we made so many updates last November around policies that apply to everybody. Even without a linked parent, our chat policies are very strict, our content policies are strong, and our moderation covers both chat and in-game content. We respect that some parents want to be involved, and some don't, and some want to but don't have time. When we design product and policy, we consider all those categories so Roblox works for everyone.

 

For parents who want to be involved but have less time, I'd advise checking in maybe once a week or once a month. Set aside thirty minutes to look at the dashboard for insights: Who are my kids' friends? What experiences are they spending time on? Then talk to your child about that. If you have more time, of course, play the games with them. But if you're really short on time, the two most important things are: who your child is spending time with, and what they're playing. We built the dashboard so those are the things parents can easily do.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

So I love that. It's like doing a weekly or monthly audit, is really what I'm hearing.

 

Diane Dempster

Exactly. And take it a step further: collaborate with your kids. I used to make my kids responsible for reporting back. "Create a picture for me: Who are your newest friends? Where did you meet them? What do you like about this game?" Not to interrogate, but so they're accountable for reporting. As teens, have them say, "These are the rules I think should apply. This is how I'll stay safe, and this is how I'll report back to you." That way, they know your job is to keep them safe, and you maintain a relationship and processes that don't feel intrusive.

 

Dina Lamdany

Yeah. Yeah, that's a really interesting idea. When we think about parental controls, there are two ways they work, and this mirrors exactly what you're saying, Diane. Parents can always go into settings and change their kids' controls. But we also allow kids, from their own privacy settings, to send requests to their parents. If something is turned off—say in-game chat—there's a little lock icon. Click it to send a request to your linked parent to change that setting, and the parent gets an email. Most usage comes from kids making these requests. It puts the onus on kids to guide parents, and parents can say yes or no. It helps parents understand what's on their kids' minds and then make an informed decision.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Well, and what really strikes me is it gives the kids an opportunity to be in communication with their parents around these issues instead of avoiding a conversation because it's uncomfortable. By the click of a button, they can invite a conversation. As parents, we want to see every invitation as an opportunity to engage with our kids. Instead of seeing that email as "One more thing," we can say, "Here's a chance for another conversation with my kid." It's up to us to bring a lens that really serves them. I have one more quick question, and I know we've got to go. We've done some collaboration with Common Sense Media. What other resources or partnerships are you working with to keep kids safe, and how does that play out in the larger world?

 

Dina Lamdany

We have a lot of partnerships with nonprofits and organizations globally to provide resources for parents on topics like digital literacy, online safety, and how to talk with your kids. We've aggregated those resources at roblox.com/familycenter. So we've aggregated those resources for parents, and we encourage parents who are just getting started and need some help getting oriented to look there. We have both guides about Roblox itself—obviously on how to use parental controls—but also guides more generally about how to talk to your kids, not just focused on Roblox. I'm not going to list off all of our partners right now, but they're all on the website and you can see them. But I do think we think about a lot of the problems we've been talking about here.

 

Child safety—how do we think about what's appropriate for this age versus that age? These are really global, industry-wide challenges, and so we don't approach this as though we're the only ones thinking about it. We're thinking about it in conjunction with many experts around the world, and we're all continuing to learn as things change out there. And so, that's why we're continuing to evolve our approach over time.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Beautiful.

 

Dina Lamdany

Thank you.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

So I hate to do this, but we have to wrap this conversation. As Dina just mentioned, you can find out more about what Roblox is doing at roblox.com/familycenter, and that link is in the show notes. We'll also link to some of the other episodes we've done that are relevant to this conversation, so if you want to find out about keeping kids safe on technology, we'll link to the Common Sense Media episode, etc. As we wrap this conversation, Dina, is there anything we haven't talked about that you want to bring in or highlight before we bring this to a close?

 

Dina Lamdany

First, I want to say thank you for having me. This has been honestly really interesting for me, and I've learned a lot. As I mentioned a bit earlier, the world is evolving a lot and so is our approach to safety. We're excited about the progress we've made so far, but we also think about safety as an ongoing process. We spend a lot of time—especially on the product team—listening to our users, both parents and kids, about their concerns. We're going to keep evolving our product. We don't think of our last release—the November release—as done; this is really for us a forever journey that we continue to invest in and evolve.

 

Diane Dempster

Well, what strikes me when you say that, Dina, and thank you for being here, is the openness you and your organization have in hearing from parents and understanding their concerns. It is an iterative process. We've reached level 423 of safety, and someone will come up with something next. Staying ahead, noticing what's going on, and hearing what parents are concerned about—that openness stands out. Thank you for that.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

We always ask our guests before we wrap: Do you have a favorite quote or motto you want to share with our community?

 

Dina Lamdany

A great question. I didn't prepare one, but one that's on my mind—there's a poet, Cleo Wade, who I really admire. Something she says that I think about as I lead my team is that "Real leaders lead with love." I think about that a lot.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

I love that. We talk a lot about how parenting is leadership, so that resonates. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you all for the work you're doing and for being open and transparent about it. We really appreciate it.

 

Dina Lamdany

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

 

Diane Dempster

Those of you listening, take a minute before we close and capture for yourself an insight—a nugget, an A-ha—something you want to take. We talked about a lot. Maybe it's a conversation with your kid, a conversation with your co-parent, or an inspiration to learn a little more. What do you want to take for yourself?

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

What's your insight, and what do you want to do with that information? How will you put it into practice in your life? As always, friends, thank you for what you're doing for yourself and your kids. Tuning in and listening makes a difference. Thanks, and we'll see you in the next conversation. Take care, everybody.