This is a pretty big issue. This change has already affected so many users across the platform, especially people in Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands specifically. 

Theres one major thing I wanna talk about regarding all of this. The chat age restrictions. As shown in the photo above, certain age groups can't talk to older age groups anymore. This severely limits how communities can work, especially since a lot are teen/adult communities with little to no predatory issues. Some of these communities are even helping kids who find it hard to make friends by allowing them into the community where they can chat with other people and get along with people, even if they aren't the same age.

Like for example, today, 1/8/2026, I got on Roblox and joined my friend (my bestie cassi, she's the one who helped me with this <3) and guess what? I couldn't chat with her at all. Thankfully the game I was in was a roleplay game and we could bypass the chat age restrictions by using our bios/names, but still. This will significally impact our friendship, because even though I turn 16 in 5 months, I will only have about 4 months to communicate with her till she has her birthday and gets moved to the 21+ category. 

So, just to conclude this, this is going to affect communities and friendships immensely. A lot of people on here make older friends that DON'T have predatory relationships with them, and that's okay. But this update? Not okay. I get it's trying to fix the predatory problem, but this just feels like a mix of control and segregation by age (you get what I'm saying?) This is why I want these features either removed or updated to be better.

(these new chat age groups aren't protecting communities. they are damaging and killing them. roblox needs to find a different and new strategy to combat predation before the damage they have caused to their own platform has gone too far.)

(examples to change/make these features better: 

• better education on signs of grooming / predation and more open communications rather than hard lines set on age groups
• better reporting system, maybe even a better system similair to these two that is created by community polls
• a better moderation team strategy for situations regarding grooming/predators
• partnering with police/fbi even and influencers to assist in this effort till predatory rates go down.)