AIBU to worry about Roblox and safeguarding?

[Grimbelina]

I don't know if anyone else has read the article below but I have a child who has just discovered Roblox and I am trying to understand how a 15 year old knows they are playing with a 6 year old. Here's a quote from the article:

“It’s a free game, you download it in 30 seconds and you’re playing against six-year-olds,” one 15-year-old trans player said.

Does this mean they are chatting with them? That the 6 year old is telling them they are 6?

Another worrying quote from the person heading up their safeguarding:

"...since we have this community of young players just starting out their journey online, we also want to go beyond safety and actually give them some life skills as they are growing up, through promotional campaigns and by highlighting different voices in the Roblox community."

What are these life skills? What is going 'beyond safety'?

www.theguardian.com/games/2021/apr/24/in-the-game-i-knew-myself-as-hannah-the-trans-gamers-finding-freedom-on-roblox

I have concerns about roblox.

My kids aren't on it but have played with others. I know some kids love it and it's been a place for freedom over lockdown which is understandable.

BUT it sets off massive alarms for me.

And this article... well.

I am being pestered constantly to download Roblox and am so reluctant to do it because of safeguarding. My DC are very savvy about online safety but even so, I am scared of it!

That's the case with all online games with chat. Fortnite is also terrible for this - you can hear how young some of the players are and there's plenty of YouTube videos where you're supposed to laugh at these young players raging, swearing and using awful language.

My DD has been using Roblox for a year (now age 11), she hasnt encountered bad language or inappropriate chat. The worst was a supposed school mate who had previously picked on my DD at school, being very aggressive and unreasonable during group Skype calls, and some nasty comments in Chat flying in both directions. Promptly put a stop to that. And no worse than DD being called names, pushed over and kicked IRL which is what was happening the previous term at school.

"Life skills" and "going beyond safety" a huge YES. Being able to participate in group games, manage your time online (most kids i know have restricted hours on apps), engaging in group Skypes whilst you play, learning how to play without dominating the games/calls and negotiating when the group will switch games to play something different, sharing (lots of gifting and roleplay in Roblox).

So far the pros definitely outweigh the cons. My DD is better at hosting a conference call now than most adults I know.

Surely you monitor your child's usage online? It's hardly a new concept, anytime you can chat to strangers online then there could be issues. I remember being in chat groups 20 years ago and some dodgy things were said.

Your 6 year old plays Roblox where you can supervise properly and monitor who they are chatting to.
That’s what you need to do.

My 16-year-old DS1 does a lot on Roblox so I showed him the remarks in the articles to get his thoughts.

He says that most likely the person is making assumptions that they're playing against 6-year-olds based on some of the reputation Roblox has. Some games do have a typical chat function, but it's very limited, "a bit naff", and it's unlikely that would get through on any games he's played, but he tends to stick to the same sorts and new things are up all the time.

He thinks the Roblox people are just bigging themselves up with that talk of 'life skills' and 'going beyond safety'. He kinda found it funny in a 'what are you talking about?' sort of way.

There have been a lot of controversies and issues with Roblox including with safeguarding -- it's a huge platform to try to keep an eye on with people making their own content so it's much like social media or other games with chat.

He thinks pre-teens "should probably be supervised" while on it though also recommends finding Roblox youtubers to get a preview of some of the games.

Turn off chat option, only allow friends they have from school no one else not even the cousin of a friend up isn’t at their school. Break the rules Ann’s account gets cancelled. Check check check

It's not unreasonable to worry, but you have to actively take an interest, be involved, look at the settings, review their friends, talk to them about it, look at what they are playing, who with and listen in.

My child had chat turned on briefly, and was then blocked by the system for using a mild swear word.

All online gaming carries a risk. I mainly play a huge MMO game, you rarely meet dc as it’s a complex game unless they are gaming with a parent, my DS is actually part of my team. He is now an adult but he started playing this when he was 12. He was never allowed to friend anyone unless they were an actual school friend and was not allowed his console in his room till he was 16.

All your suspected horror about online gaming is sadly true. Obviously most people are ok but there is that small percentage who are the scum of the earth and because it’s anonymous they behave terribly.

With roblox and games that are known to be played by a significant number of children there is not just the risk of them hearing awful swearing, misogyny, racism and homophobia there is the chance they could come in to contact with adults actively looking for dc to groom.

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/paedophile-groomed-150-children-engage-16258877

I belong to a few gaming forums and discord’s where safety and harassment are often discussed. This is mainly about women being sexually harassed up to and including rape threats which happens too frequently, online gaming is an absolute cesspool sometimes.

Parents should always check safety settings and disable in game chat and messaging. If they don’t do that and let their dc play with strangers online they are naive at best.

On MN people kick off about the violence in games but the real danger is letting your child interact with the world unsupervised.

You wouldn't let your 6 yo use a knife with no supervision or previous warning and rules would you?

You wouldn't say "oh knives scare me" so never allow your child to be on one.

You research, you supervise, you get involved. When she first got it at 5 DD only played by herself or with me. Then She was only allowed friends from her class and I always checked her list and her pending requests list. She has an under 13 account and I don't know if it's because of that or an universal feature but a lot of the chat gets replaced with , not just swearing . I check her chats. Yes it's "hard work" but she can play and use her imagination safely. Rather than completely banning something she can enjoy it and learn to use it safely and why. She's now 10 and has never had any issues , bar some squabbles when she played with her friends.

It was a life line during lockdown when they would ring each other and role play and chat and play as they would in real life.

After that terrible murder of Breck Bednar (a 14 yr old groomed by an older teenager he met online), I thought that the dangers of essentially letting complete strangers interact with my kids in their bedrooms and relying on a gaming company to have adequate safeguards wasn’t worth any perceived benefit so none of them had any access to online gaming or messaging until 15/16 and I had drummed internet safety into them.

They were quite happy doing their own thing on minecraft, wii sports etc.

I am not judging anyone for their own decisions re their children, I just didn’t feel it right or necessary for us.

You can turn chat off. My 9yo doesn't have the chat facility and can't see what others are saying.

My children play on it. They have linked up with friends on it. They know that if I ever find that they have accepted someone as a Roblox friend that they do not know in real life, that the game goes.
Because they only play with people they know in real life, if they want to chat about the game as they play, they do it through messenger or similar and not on Roblox. They also know that if they post messages on Roblox in the public chat, the game will go. I made it my business to sit down and work out how the game functioned so that I could put in place sensible rules.
I have explained why though. They both know that people use the game who are not who they say they are and that there are people who could want to hurt them, who could use the game to do that.

I see it in the same way as I see crossing the road. It is part of the world they are growing up in. If I just ban them from it, then they will never learn to protect themselves and are more likely to get hurt. My eldest has now started secondary school. I cannot control what she sees on someone else’s phone. I need to know she has the tools to keep herself safe, and I need to be able to trust her. So I start out with lots of supervision and gradually let them have slightly more unsupervised access, so that by the time I cannot be looking over their shoulder all the time, they are broadly able to do it alone.

I also think regular open conversations are important. I do talk to my eldest in particular if something comes up on the news, I ask her what’s going on in the games she’s playing.

It is definitely a social activity for both my two - they don’t tend to play alone but only when friends are on. Kind of like long distance board games! It’s been a life saver for them this last year.

We got rid of Robox several years ago after a horrible incident. DD (Aged about 7 at the time) was allowed a group chat with her school friends but didn’t realise that one of them had added another, a stranger, who listened to their chat and then threatened to come to their school and hurt them and their families. DD hasn’t wanted to touch it since, and the school went through all their accounts to check the security settings.

I'm just thinking about the analogy of long distance board games. And about whether there is any other precedent in history for children's games to have been so thorough co-opted into being a giant commercial matrix designed purely to make money.

Most fo the games and toys I had as a kid were either imaginative (mostly), or involved things like tricycles, skipping, making paper dolls, drawing, marbles and so on.Some board games. I guess Ravensburger and Mattel have always made a lot of money. But you can buy a board game once and keep it for years. It doesn't keep asking your kid for cash every time they play. The commercial toy market has been advertising to kids for years on TV and in the aisles at Tesco, but I can turn off the TV or just not buy the plastic tat.

I'm wondering at what time in history children's play has ever been so directly seen as a giant market where adult moneymakers and gamers can have direct access to young children, normalising the idea that 'games' are first and foremost a commercial enterprise for generating large amounts of cash? I'm also wondering whether instead of thinking that we should just accept this and accept our part in getting them ready and trained up for a lifetime of being profit vehicles in everything they do, even at play, we might instead resist the complete commercialisation and profiteering taking over all of our social world and just go to the park with some sticks? Or borrow some library books which don't perpetuate the idea that every moment is life is an opportunity for monetisation? Appreciate that lockdown has made things difficult in that regard, I nearly went nuts myself with the homeschooling and work and being stuck indoors. However I don't really see why we have to accept that our kids should just enjoy being sucked into the vortex of capitalism at all.

Paragraphs from the article:

"At first Hannah had no idea how she could make that much money. Roblox provided a potential answer. Though free to download, Roblox makes money from a premium subscription service and the sale of Robux, an in-game currency used to buy accessories and items for avatars. It is not just the company that can profit; Roblox has more than 8 million community developers, often teenagers working alone or in small teams, who create games for others to play. When a developer has earned 100,000 Robux from their games, they can cash out at an exchange rate of 100,000 Robux to $350. There is serious money to be made: the developer community made $328m in 2020, up from $110m in 2019.

Hannah had been making games on Roblox for fun since 2014. She joined a small team of game-makers who go by the name “Pops Developing”, and began creating games for a fan group that now has more than 13,000 members. In their most successful game so far, Marble Simulator, players roll around a blindingly colourful landscape collecting coins and blasting enemies. It recorded 1,500 simultaneous players during the first coronavirus lockdown. This is still small‑scale – the most successful game racked up more than 1.5 million players – but it allowed Hannah to pay other players to help with 3D modelling for their next game. She has now earned £1,200 from Roblox, and estimates she has more than £1,000 in her account to cash out. She plans to put the money towards voice surgery, booked for early 2022, for which she will need £15,000. “Even if I earn just 5% of what those top games earn, I’ll be happy,” she says.""

@IEat

Turn off chat option, only allow friends they have from school no one else not even the cousin of a friend up isn’t at their school. Break the rules Ann’s account gets cancelled. Check check check

This. With bells on.

If DS wants to chat to a friend while they play then they FaceTime. No online chatting allowed. Same with fortnite.

You can switch the chat off so they can't send or receive messages.

Roblox has parental controls. You can turn off chat etc

My 13 year old plays on it with his 6 year old brother. They o ly know who each other is becuase they know each others users names

My DS is on Roblox. I think as others say, you need to monitor and teaching them about online safety is essential, however the fact is that a lot of parents do allow unsupervised access and there are a huge number of young children on there. It is a safeguarding nightmare.
That Guardian article is incredible irresponsible. I'm quite astounded that they can just casually run something that includes an 18yo stranger chatting to 6yos online, talk about providing support and advice away from family or parent knowledge and present that as a good thing without acknowledging any of the red flags. At best, its naive and irresponsible.

As stackthecats pointed out:
I'm just thinking about the analogy of long distance board games. And about whether there is any other precedent in history for children's games to have been so thorough co-opted into being a giant commercial matrix designed purely to make money
Add into that the ability of some of the most dangerous adults that children must be protected being able to access children "in disguise".

The data and stories from the police about the online grooming of children are truly frightening.

My 8 year old ds is really into Roblox, it became his main way of interacting with friends through lockdown. The thing is, there's no magical solution that can make any game 💯 safe, it boils down to supervising your own child, having regular conversations with them about them games they play (I have a account and can see and join in with what he plays which helps me to monitor him) going through their friends list together and generally enabling your own child.

We have switched off Chat and don't allow DS1 to accept friend invites. It easy enough to restrict. He is 8 but ASD so I would be remarkably silly not to monitor and restrict it.

This does come down to monitoring at a certain age ds1 has his computer in the living room where we all are as a family and isn't allowed to play without one of us in the room (I mean barring the odd loo trip etc). I don't see the issue if its locked down like this.

My DC are long time users of Roblox, about 4 years. We've encountered no problems. Certain things you should know though.

You can turn off private chat and you can limit on game chat as well.

I would not allow the Discord Chat function AT ALL for any age. There is no moderation in Discord Chat, therefore, no safeguarding. Some games, such as Adopt Me or Work in a Pizza Place, attract younger children so they may be playing with older children who like the game as well.

Avatars have the option of putting in pronouns in their description (and it comes up above the avatar's head as they play). As I say to my DC no one on the internet needs to know whether you are a boy or a girl so it's another NO.

As for life skills, this is true depending on the game. My DC have found out lots about how to run businesses such as restaurants etc, looking after animals and babies. Obviously, there are shoot up games too! There are lots of collaborative games as well and DC have Roblox friends but there is no exchange of personal information, so that is all good.

It is the parents' responsibility to make sure that their children are safe on the internet. I am happy for DC to play on Roblox but then I keep a very close eye on what they are playing. I have banned them from certain games because I thought they were not age appropriate. It's usually when someone at school

But to answer the OP, I've not clicked on the Guardian link because I don't want to give them clicks, but it sounds like yet another company that has been captured and their safeguarding is being compromised.