Parents who are worried about their children gaming on Roblox should not let them use it, the platform’s chief executive has said.

There have been reports of bullying and grooming, and fears that children are being exposed to explicit or harmful content, on the site, which is the most popular platform in the UK among gamers aged eight to 12.

Roblox’s co-founder and chief executive, David Baszucki, told BBC News the platform was vigilant in protecting its users, and said “tens of millions” of people had “amazing experiences” on the site.

But he added: “My first message would be: if you’re not comfortable, don’t let your kids be on Roblox. That sounds a little counterintuitive, but I would always trust parents to make their own decisions.

“We do in the company take the attitude that any bad, even one bad, incident is one too many. We watch for bullying, we watch for harassment, we filter all of those kinds of things, and I would say behind the scenes, the analysis goes on all the way to, if necessary, reaching out to law enforcement.”

Justine Roberts, the head of Mumsnet, told the BBC’s Today programme that parents could not watch everything their child was doing “24/7”, even if all the parental controls were set and especially if they had several children. She said parents on the forum had spoken of how they struggled to manage their children’s use of Roblox.

The US-based company is one of the world’s largest games platforms, with more monthly users than Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation combined. In 2024 the site averaged more than 80 million players a day, and roughly 40% of those were under 13.

Players who behave badly can face temporary time-outs and longer bans, and Roblox claims to analyse all communications that pass between members on the platform. The company is increasingly using more advanced AI systems to flag certain behaviour for investigation.

In November last year, under 13s were banned from sending direct messages and also from playing in “hangout experiences”, spaces that feature chat between players.

Baszucki said: “We don’t condone any type of image-sharing on our own platform, and you’ll see us getting more and more, I think, way beyond where the law is on this type of behaviour.”

He added that Roblox used rigorous guidelines and had a “consistent policy” on age ratings, based on the content as well the titles of the games.

Baszucki founded the platform with Erik Cassel in 2004 and released it to the public in 2006. The pair’s first company was an education software provider called Knowledge Revolution, but they quickly noticed that children were using the platform to do activities other than homework.

Baszucki said: “They wanted to play and build stuff. They were making houses or ships or scenery, and they wanted to jump in, and all of that learning was the germination of Roblox.”

As the platform’s popularity grew, the founders noticed players “starting to act out”, prompting them to appoint four people as safety moderators.

Despite attracting decent numbers of gamers, it was only when the company launched its digital currency, Robux, a year later that it really started to make money – Roblox is now worth $41bn (£32bn).

Players use Robux to buy accessories and unlock content. Content creators now receive 70% of the fee and the store operates on dynamic pricing, meaning popular items cost more.

Baszucki said he believed Roblox was “the future of communication” and was now focused on its evolution into a metaverse-style experience where people go about their daily lives in a virtual world, in avatar form, and hoped eventually to attract 10% of the world’s gamers.