Grooming on Roblox Discord & other games

[Heyjoewhatsup]

I went to a talk by ex police who educate about kids online safety. I must be naive as I didn’t realise the scale of this crisis.

He said in the last 6 weeks they’ve seen the problems getting much worse. They visit schools around the U.K. and talk to kids every day who update them on what they’re doing online so they really have their finger on the pulse.

It’s all very worrying what they were telling us. Roblox, Discord etc are rife with paedophiles and he explained how they groom. Kids essentially want to get hold of coins to buy accessories and the cutest pets (these kids are young). They are approached to take pictures of their feet (big thing with paedos right now) and escalates.

The statistics on the growth since the pandemic and the huge rise this year were truly awful . Primary kids taking photos of nursery age siblings for coins to buy stupid virtual shit. Kids being groomed to advertise and buy drugs for county line gangs … all on gaming sites.

The percentage of kids in primary who knew about adult social media stars dying from cancer, losing babies and the mental health toll that had on them. They ask why they didn’t share their upset with their parents and it’s always “they don’t know watch it and I didn’t want to get into trouble “.

This is not a minority of kids it’s prolific and lots of kids parents have no idea what they are up to. Our very middle class primary school is already affected. The things our kids were telling the ex-policemen yesterday was eye opening- so many kids in my DC class are being impacted by this right now.

Then they talked about the rise in misogyny among year 7/8/9 boys and girls standing up against Andrew Tate’s bullshit. The boys arguing in front of these ex policemen that AT is promoting the truth and standing up for young men. He’s a hero in their eyes.

It’s all very alarming but I’m so glad I attended as it’s really opened my eyes.

Also something I didn’t know… vast majority of groomed girls abused through self generated images and videos. Whereas for boys, the risk is hands on and sexual abuse in person.

I really am very naive and need to work out how to talk to my young children about this and protect them.

It's been rife since the internet started gaining popularity imo, and just getting worse since everything is so much more accessible.

Just curious roughly how old you are OP?

I'm early/mid 20's and don't know a single girl friend my age (including me) who wasn't groomed/spoken to inappropriately on the internet as a pre-teen/early teen.

This documentary is worth a watch: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03cgtx5.

It's about the tragic story of Breck Bednar. I talked to both of my children about this - although it was very close to home anyway as we had a connection with the family.

I’m late 30s and have not dated since early 20s so yeah I’m out of touch

We did have girls groomed at school by older men in the community so obviously it’s always been a risk, but it wasn’t paedophiles (pre-pubescent) it was men who were into pubescent girls

It's a huge issue for our children. You can start with the basics from quite early on - never handover any passwords to anyone, never give your name, address or phone number, never tell anyone what school you go to and never take any photos of anything and upload them. Our school has recently issued a booklet on how to talk about the abhorrent Andrew Tate (this is for older boys). It is truly shocking that the algorithms deliberately serve this up to teenage boys.

Thanks for posting OP. My 8yo is desperate for Roblox because everyone else has it. I am very out of touch with this stuff.

I have gamed for over 40 years and am a joint leader of a gaming clan and a woman. The stuff that goes on online is shocking. My DS was only allowed to game with people he knew in real life when he was a child.

I have always turned down offers of free games and cosmetics and it’s happened to me quite a lot. I have blocked 50 people who have had behaviour I do not like. I have also reported someone who I thought was an actual threat.

My DS games console was in a family area and not in his room. I also took it away for two weeks when GCSE revision needed to be done. We had no phones in the bedroom either. Basically electronics were banned in the bedrooms at night.

To set up consoles as safely as possible look at videos on YouTube don’t try and read an article if you are not very IT literate as you can literally follow through on screen how to do it.

Thank you @Iceysuperslide that’s great advice

I think I will consider a Nintendo Switch as that’s safer

Interestingly, the ex-policemen were advising to let your kids online but set up safety settings and educate them/ encourage open dialogue.

The kids whose parents are very strict and keep them away from these sites are more at risk because they definitely won’t be disclosing concerns with their parents.

Kids will eventually get access, it might be on your device or at school/ on a play date or sleepover. The message was if you’re not having these conversations, your child is at greater risk.

Re: telling your child to not give away their address- they don’t need to ask as often the location setting is on.

I’m looking for support from other parents that’s child has been online groomed?
I found out just over 24 hours ago and are finding it extremely difficult as my daughter was threatened into sending explicit pictures of herself, I’m finding it hard to navigate through this 😢

I really wish the RoBlox grooming was more publicised, we’ve never let our child play on it because of these issues. She blames us for being unfair as all her friends get to play it.

@Heidi85 contact the Two Johns - they are specialist ex police officers - very up to date on Roblox grooming

The 2 Johns

https://esafetytraining.org/

This seemed to be a broken link, can I word search it?

Thank you so much x

I’m sure there are ways to blocking stuff on Roblox. Both of my boys play and they said they’ve never been approached by anyone dodgy but said it depends on the games you play. They play something called BTFS(?) but said that “Adopt me” is full of “weirdos”