The research company ‘Revealing Reality’ has been investigating and reporting on child safety within the ‘Roblox’ gaming platform. They delivered a workshop for Polaris and the recording of this can still be viewed on Learnative – search for ‘Roblox’ to find it. You can also read about their findings here:
Roblox – the update – Think RR
What is Roblox?
Roblox is a very popular gaming platform that hosts a very large number of user-generated games. Games can be played by multiple players who are unknown to each other and players can interact with each other physically and via in-game conversation (by text or voice). Games are age-rated. Players can ‘connect’ with other players by agreement, which allows their characters to interact more and travel around the game together. Children will typically do this with real-life friends but may also be asked to ‘connect’ by people they don’t know. 40% of players globally are under 13.
Roblox does have parental controls, applied by creating an adult account. Through these controls you can:
- Restrict games to age levels (e.g. ‘mild’, ‘moderate’)
- Allow/disallow children to chat with other players within games or send direct messages to other players.
- Set spending limits for in-game currency (‘Robux’)
- Control who can see if your child is in a Roblox game.
These are helpful, but some problems remain:
- It is not possible for players to know if another player is an adult or a child, and adult accounts can access all games.
- Switching off the chat function means that your child cannot interact with their friends in the game. Having it on means that they may see inappropriate chat generated by other players. Chat is moderated, but players find ways to bypass filters. There is no function to only communicate with friends.
- Teenagers (13+) with age-verified accounts (verified by a mobile phone number) can chat by text or voice with other teens or adults. It is possible for an adult to try to obtain a child’s contact details for other platforms (e.g. Snapchat, Discord).
- Games are age-rated, but this is not always appropriate. There are games with simulated sex acts and violence that are rated suitable for children. User-generated content is difficult to moderate and changes all the time.
Advice
- Apply parental controls – an adult should create a Roblox account, link it to the child’s and apply the required controls.
- Young children playing on Roblox should be supervised to ensure that they are playing age-appropriate games. We would advise disallowing chat and messaging functions for young children. Older children and young people may also need increased supervision if they have difficulty recognising and responding to risk.
- All children and young people should be advised not to ‘connect’ on Roblox with anyone that they do not know in real life.
- Young people with chat functions enabled should be advised to ignore requests from other players to share personal details/ usernames on other platforms and leave a game if they feel threatened or uncomfortable. It is possible to report abuse to Roblox, and block users.
