Is Roblox Safe?

[sleepfortheweek]

DD1 is 7.5 and has been asking for Roblox for a while. More and more of her friends are getting it and so the pressure is mounting!

I've read about it but don't fully understand it and I know it gets a lot of bad press.

She has minecraft and plays that a lot, but I feel that's a fairly safe game as she only plays it with her sister.

Can Roblox be made safe for a 7/8 year old?

All experiences welcome - I need all the info I can get to justify my decision to DD1.

Thanks!

The approved content is fine and suitable for dc, but you have to know to limit the account to this, excluding the homemade content which has inappropriate stuff in.

Players can chat to each other and friend each other, but we just have a clear rule with our dc that they only have friends who they know in real life.

My dc have had no problems using roblox.

I had also heard bad reviews, but couldn’t find any detail so my DS 9 has been trying it out under my watchful eye recently as similar pressure to keep up with his peers here.

things I’m not happy with so far -

1. there’s a chat function to talk to random strangers. My son is a very reluctant reader so isn’t interested in this and I’ve watched him play for a while and there’s never been anything weird on the chat, but obv not ideal and I can see me banning it in future if he ever takes an interest in reading and communicating with strangers.
2. there are some games (basically there’s a load of different games you can play within Roblox) that have guns/violence, and while not bloody or extreme it’s not something I’m happy with my son playing on. There’s plenty of innocent games like puzzle games, Ladybug and Cat Noir, Sonic etc which makes it difficult to police as you never know what your child is going to click on. I’ve told my son he can’t play the gun games and I check on what he’s doing every so often and he knows I’ll take the iPad away if he breaks my trust, but also not an ideal level of freedom depending on what you’re happy with your child seeing/playing.

its not one I’m really comfortable with pre-12 perhaps and will keep a watchful eye or delete if necessary.

PS I didn’t know as @Stompythedinosaur said that you can limit content - will explore this, thank you!

It's the same as anything, if you police it properly it can be OK.

Make sure you set it up properly so the age limit is set appropriately. There are some downright weird games on there!

Also make sure your bank account info is locked down. Lots of games have lots of micro transactions and if you don't have it all password or code protected you could easily spend a few hundred quid in a day!

I'll quite liberal with screen time etc and my kids basically have unlimited access to their Nintendo Switches. But I make sure they play Roblox while supervised!