Roblox announced new mental health partnerships and platform features in May, coinciding with Mental Health Awareness Month. The company cited its role as the first online experience for many young users as motivation for its expanded investment in well-being resources.

The company is partnering with Koko, a mental health nonprofit, to sponsor a game designed to help children and teens build resilience against bullying. Game studio Playerthree developed the experience alongside researchers at Northwestern University’s Lab for Scalable Mental Health. “Roblox is doing exactly that, and we’re excited to help more young people build skills to bounce back from hard moments,” said Rob Morris, Ph.D., CEO of Koko, in the announcement.

Roblox also sponsored a well-being-themed challenge at this year’s LA Hacks hackathon. UCLA students Jasmine Ly and Michelle Phan won the competition with Mindful Egg, a pet simulation game in which self-care activities such as journaling and breathing exercises help virtual pets thrive. Roblox plans to make the game available on the platform once development is complete.

Roblox is also expanding its partnership with ThroughLine, a crisis support service that has provided free, confidential assistance to users since 2024. The company plans to make ThroughLine’s helpline locator service available in more areas of the platform in 2026. Roblox also joined “Thrive,” an initiative enabling platforms to anonymously share signals related to self-harm, suicide, and eating disorders to identify potential risks faster, without exchanging user data. 

Separately, Roblox co-developed a Gaming and Mental Health guide for teens with Dan Reidenberg, Psy.D., Director of “Thrive,” covering how gaming affects the brain and early indicators of overuse.

Platform Safety Concerns

The announcements follow research published by The Guardian in April 2025, conducted by digital-behavior consultancy Revealing Reality, which created test accounts registered to fictional users ranging in age from five to adult and tracked their interactions on the platform.

The research found that children as young as five could communicate with adults during gameplay without effective age verification. A 10-year-old test account could access environments containing sexually suggestive content, and an adult test account was able to request a five-year-old account’s Snapchat handle using coded language that bypassed in-game chat filters. Revealing Reality concluded that existing safety controls remain “limited in their effectiveness.”

Roblox Chief Safety Officer Matt Kaufman said the company “continually evolves” its policies and technologies to protect users, noting it added more than 40 safety enhancements in 2024. Roblox acknowledged to The Guardian that age verification for users under 13 “remains an industry challenge.”

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