When kids get older, you might choose to let them open up Roblox play beyond their friend list. This will give them a good foundation for how to use other social platforms wisely in the future. Help them check their Roblox friend requests one by one and confirm each person’s username with that friend or the friend’s parent before accepting them. If you do switch to online play, be sure to check privacy settings carefully and restrict access to friends that they actually know and trust in person. But as kids get more into the game or want to interact with friends while playing, you may decide to let them play online. Playing offline is the absolute safest way to play Roblox, especially for the youngest kids. Parents have also reported their kids encountering predators within the game, like one child who’d secretly been contacted on a third-party messaging app by someone he met on Roblox and was “ groomed into sending sexually explicit images of himself,” and the six-year-old girl invited into a “sex room” by a “friend” while playing Roblox.Īlthough Roblox does restrict certain content and features for users under 13, their system for moderation and harassment prevention does not have a strong reputation. For example, one mom publicly tweeted a thread containing screenshots of Roblox users’ profiles she’d found recruiting kids into extremist hate groups like the KKK and other white supremacist groups, fundraising for neo-Nazis, and celebrating serial killers. It’s also critical to remember that those users - and fellow players a child might meet online - are not always kids themselves, and don’t necessarily have kids’ best interests at heart. It’s important to remember that while Roblox might be considered a “kids’ game,” everything your child encounters there was created by other users. Most parents aren’t aware of the kind of content that exists in Roblox that is not kid-friendly, including fake strip clubs, concentration camps, racist games like one which “encourages Roblox players to hunt and kill African people,” and more. Just like the rest of the internet, playing Roblox comes with the very real risk of encountering predators, adult content, bullying, racism, hate speech, and all kinds of extremism. Kids playing the online version could be interacting with adults via chat - including in-game voice chat for users 13 and up - as well as exploring virtual worlds with questionable content. While the cartoon-like games on the platform are primarily meant for kids, there’s no age cap for players or developers. Here’s what parents need to be aware of when their kids want to play Roblox: Problematic content and predators on Roblox However, Roblox is still an online platform with monetary transactions, advertisements, and the ability to connect to other players and their content - meaning that there are plenty of safety considerations for families. Roblox is designed for young kids, so parents might assume it’s a safe platform. And because Roblox is actually a platform in which to explore more than 40 million creative games and virtual worlds, it offers plenty of variety to keep kids interested, and even the opportunity to create their own games. That’s not surprising: There are no-cost options for play, it works on practically any device, and the platform makes it easy to invite friends to play with you. Roblox is considered the most popular video game for 5- to 12-year-olds.
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