Roblox looks cute like Minecraft so parents don’t pay attention to it.

Most games have a chat feature tacked on, but Roblox is more like a chatroom with games added on. It’s a chatroom where around 60% of the user base is under the age of 16. 40% of the users are under the age of 12.

Grooming starts on Roblox but the bad stuff happens in places like Discord private servers. Roblox doesn’t do anything to stop it because the can claim ignorance since it doesn’t happen directly in their chat.

I know a kid who went through this. I was the one that had to flag all the messages for Discord to get involved. The kid talked to me about the online groomers bc he wasn’t comfortable talking to his parents since he hadn’t told them that he was gay. I can’t imagine kids like him who deal with abuse because they don’t have anyone they feel safe to tell.

If you have kids that play these games, talk to them about online safety. Make sure you have a plan for when something bad happens. When not if. Work together with your kid to find a third party that you trust and the kid would feel comfortable talking to if something happens and they are afraid to tell you, maybe a relative or a close friend.

Is this why my niece came into my room at midnight in tears telling me she “went on the bad Roblox”?

I wish there was a system where parents get an app on which they have to approve friend requests for their children in these games and only people on their children‘s friendlist can read/hear them and be read/heard by them. And obviously only parents can send out requests. That way, parents could make sure only their kids‘ school friends can talk to them.

Obviously, they can‘t make new friends online then, but that‘s for when they‘re older…

Seems more reasonable and better to me than nothing. Or than scanning kids‘ faces.