The Senate has opened a child safety investigation into Roblox
Senators Josh Hawley and Dick Durbin have opened a bipartisan investigation into child safety on Roblox, ordering the company to preserve records and produce documents by the end of August. Roblox says it looks forward to sharing the facts.
The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism has opened an investigation into child safety on Roblox.
Subcommittee chairman Josh Hawley and ranking member Dick Durbin sent a letter to Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki on August 12 informing him of the inquiry. It’s bipartisan, and it comes with document demands attached.
Roblox has until the end of August to respond.
What the subcommittee is asking for
The letter directs Roblox to preserve records and hand over material, and the scope is broad.
The company is instructed to preserve all records in any format relating to child safety, child sexual or physical abuse, child bullying, and child financial exploitation. An annex attached to the letter contains document requests and written questions.
Among them is a request that Roblox state what percentage of reported allegations were reviewed by a human rather than an automated system. The full production is due by August 31, 2026.
What the senators said
The letter is blunt about why the subcommittee is looking.
“You trumpet Roblox as a safe digital playground for children as young as five,” it reads. “But the public record raises serious questions about this promise of safety.”
It states that over the past decade police have arrested numerous people for serious crimes against children they met through the platform. It also argues that the company “appears to prioritize revenue and engagement metrics over the safety and well-being of our children.”
It closes: “Let us be clear: children on your platform are hurting. Congress will not look the other way.”
Roblox’s response
The company is not treating this as a fight, at least publicly.
Chief safety officer Matt Kaufman said in a statement that Roblox is built on a foundation of safety, that the company does not compromise on that commitment, and that it looks forward to sharing the facts about how it works to protect users.
Roblox has made repeated safety changes over the years, adding parental controls and age restrictions intended to keep younger users away from content meant for older ones.
The numbers, and the wider pressure
Two figures give the scale of the platform and the scale of the problem.
Roblox has more than 100 million daily users, and a large share are children. In 2024 the platform averaged over 80 million players a day, with roughly 40 percent under 13.
The company reported sending 65,381 suspected child-exploitation reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in 2025, more than double the previous year’s total. That number can be read two ways, as evidence of a serious problem on the platform, or as evidence that its reporting systems are catching more of it. Both readings are in circulation.
The Senate inquiry also isn’t happening in isolation. Roblox faces lawsuits from multiple states including Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky, and Nebraska, and a Federal Trade Commission complaint filed in May by the advocacy groups Fairplay and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
What happens next
The immediate milestone is the August 31 production deadline, and what Roblox turns over will shape everything after it.
Congressional investigations of this kind often lead to hearings, and Hawley and Durbin have an active record on child-safety legislation, including the STOP CSAM Act that cleared committee unanimously.
For parents, the practical situation hasn’t changed today. Roblox is still running, still available, and still one of the most-used platforms by children in the country. What has changed is that the company now has to document, under congressional demand, how its safety systems actually work and how many reports a human being ever looks at. That answer will matter more than any statement either side has issued so far.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism letter (August 12, 2026), verified as the primary source for the investigation’s opening, the preservation directive, the document annex and interrogatories, the human-review question, and the quoted passages
Kotaku (Rebekah Valentine) (August 14, 2026), verified for Roblox chief safety officer Matt Kaufman’s statement, the platform’s prior parental-control and age-lock changes, and the 2024 daily-player figure with roughly 40 percent under 13
PC Gamer (August 2026), verified for the bipartisan framing, the end-of-August production deadline, the “prioritize revenue and engagement metrics” and “Congress will not look the other way” passages, and Roblox’s stated willingness to share facts
Softonic and Hawley’s office (August 2026), verified for the August 31 deadline, the 65,381 NCMEC reports in 2025 and the year-over-year doubling, the state lawsuits, the May 2026 FTC complaint from Fairplay and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, and the STOP CSAM Act context