My daughter (now 12) played a lot of Roblox, and mostly it was fine. She seemed able to avoid the shadier parts and, as a parent, you trust the child-friendly features.
However, controls are subverted (for example, by using special characters to get through language filters), and my daughter fell victim to exploitation that moved from Roblox innocence, to instagram, porn, and one-on-one calls. Fortunately we caught it (in time?). Police traced it back to international gangs that prey on the innocent. The trail, at least for us, went cold as there is a request to police in a country (we were not told which) by ours (UK), that is unlikely to be followed up.
Roblox was a big thing for her, and the events that started there were traumatic for the whole family.
Roblox is extremely popular and a really good platform. I'm not going to go on a crusade to try and chance peoples' minds, but Roblox is not as kid-friendly as one would think. It suffers, as all digital social platforms do, with uncontrollable, mis-understood, and untraceable actions by bad actors, that are used for nefarious purposes.
There is only so much you can do as a parent and it's not easy knowing the right answer without hindsight, but personally as a child who broke every firewall used to control my browsing habits, who engaged routinely with people 10+ years older, I have experienced more creeps in real life than online and most small communities I've been a part of would shut that stuff down immediately.
It's definitely a problem with scale as far as community moderation, however even when creeps made attempts at me online I knew to report, block and move on. I think our fear over exposing our children to topics of sexuality prevent them the chance to develop the appropriate sensibilities to avoid being targeted.
There's not an easy solution, but I hope that being open with my children about the kind of vile people in this world and the tactics they use to trick and manipulate others will instill enough common sense that I don't have to hover over their Roblox sessions. I'm curious if in hindsight you could have educated her better, or if you think it just didn't stick.
Assuming you're male... it's not that there are zero predators seeking male children, but the threat does seem to be asymmetric. (I may be wrong about this! It a supposition based on my experiences and what I've heard from others.)
> as a child who broke every firewall used to control my browsing habits, who engaged routinely with people 10+ years older, I have experienced more creeps in real life than online and most small communities I've been a part of would shut that stuff down immediately.
Same situation and I was groomed repeatedly (luckily mostly, though not entirely, ineptly). Perhaps not a coincidence that I'm a girl...
> I knew to report, block and move on.
Or that girls are often sexually precocious and may _want_ pseudo-romantic attention from older men, while being too naive to see the risks to them. That was certainly my case.
Overall I don't think it's as simple or easy as you're making it out to be.
I didn't mean to oversimplify, just didn't want to get too longwinded. I agree with the points you make. That's why I think it's a difficult problem, because I realize not everyone thinks the way I do and I want to learn how to distill that knowledge into others.
Assuming that sexual precociousness is a natural feeling, which as a male I certainly felt in my youth, is there a way you think you could have safely satisfied or otherwise dealt with those feelings appropriately, or did it come down to a misunderstanding of power dynamic or that you were being manipulated? Did it stem from a lack of closeness with the existing male figures in your life?
Clearly we both found that prohibition does little to stop the fortuitous, so instead of trying to control and track my children's internet habits I hope I can just address these issues directly and just raise them to be sensible.
It seems to me like there's a lot I can do as a parent. I control the endpoints. I can use certificate pinning and a proxy to read https traffic on the network. I can get passwords and accounts and monitor contacts.
Whether I should do that is more of a question. But I don't think it's a forgone conclusion that children will be able to escape digital surveillance.
My point is that I can't track my childrens' every moves, MITM them, while simultaneously teaching them about the dangers of the surveillance state and the value of cryptography. So I have to rely on the same means we used before the internet, which I feel is something of a dying body of knowledge.
Sadly I believe these kinds of things happen and are increasing in frequency on all apps/games/sites that allow for user generated profiles / messaging.
I have seen an increase in the use of these methods the last 5 -6 years or so especially.
We had an influx of these types of social engineering / personal data collection with later demands of money or nude pics (and often times both) - some years ago.
Looking into negative link attacks to disrupt google search results found some sites teaching people how to use chat systems for ill gotten gains - from selling fake pics to blackmail, begging for money for sickness - all sorts of things - posted right on public forums and with links to dozens of sites in which these methods could be used quickly.
As to where I think there is less of this on fbook for some reasons - fbook is sometimes employed as part of the scams.
long stories short - I think roblox is not necessarily more dangerous for teens than discord / snap / IG / etc.
I've had several talks with kids about safety in using internet connected things - about how sending a pic can give up your location, and sharing articles from the news about sextortion and such. These got very detailed when questioned, and I don't think it should be a 'one time "the talk" either.
Explaining how some simple social engineering can take two seemingly innocent data points and locate someone for kidnapping or whatever - like casually throwing in 'what school do you go to' - and 'parents aren't home till Xpm' can lead to bad things - and one might not notice those inquiries / data sharing while in the middle of game.
technology evolves, the attack surfaces do too.
I've had the opposite happen with similar results - a kid extorting adults, that led to international request for police help - even with data proving ip and the ISP coordinating data - no resolve - and that kid keeps coming back and ruining stuff for others thanks to wealthy parents and unlimited VPNs, very hard to block.
In short I think roblox is no less safe than other portals aside from fbook. If 99% of [app/game] people are nice - and one percent are looking to leverage your honesty for ill gotten gains - the apps with the most people will yield extortion opportunities that are worth the time to exploit it seems. Especially from places where $20 goes a long way for some reason.
What's a good way to detect this early? Just from the pattern you shared it sounds like a good idea to check who they're talking to on instagram to catch any new contacts and review them.
I'm personally trying to decide whether I want a digital panopticon for my children where I won't be surprised by anything like this, and being more laissez faire. I enjoyed unrestricted and unmonitored internet traffic growing up and quite enjoyed it. On the other hand, my wife did too but had a significant negative experience.
I’ve forbidden Instagram on my daughter’s phone. It condenses everything that is terrible about modern society: the incessant pursuit of (largely fake) outward success and related promotion of idiotic and unhealthy role models. I don’t know how long this will last (she’s 11) and there is only so much one can do (does she use filters to make tons of pics trying to look “cute”? Sadly, yes), but I’ll do what I can.
Obviously she’s also had all the spiel, both from parents and teachers) about not trusting anyone online who they’ve not met beforehand, about not sharing pics of private parts for any reason, and I’ve started pointing out that “the internet does not forget”, and that innocent-looking material passed to trusted parties might well be used against her later on.
In a way, it’s horrible: as a kid I was free to do anything I wanted, worst that could happen was prank-pwnage on the worst IRC channels; and I met a few interesting characters I may have not encountered otherwise. It’s the digital equivalence of letting 6-year-olds roam free outside, something that was natural 40 years ago and sadly could be very dangerous today. “This is why we cannot have nice things.”
I agree that instagram is too much for young people. Probably too much for some older people too. I also agree that there are some horrible implications from this technology - even though I'm generally more techno-optimist, it's harder when trying to think through how my children will interact with the internet.
One tip I've read regarding the spiel your daughter has heard from both parents and teachers, is that it's also important to let your child know she can come to you if she does make a mistake in this regard. Apparently some predators will, if they can get naked pictures or something like it in the first place, use that as leverage to exploit the child further. It's good to let your child know not to share naked pictures, but I think it also needs to be clear that if they do they can still get help from their parents.
This is terrible. But being 12 years old, she’s in the 6th grade. By next year, she’ll be in junior high school, and once you get her an iPhone, then there’s no more holding back the floodgates.
I'm curious what you mean by this. What makes something safe for children or not? (This is an honest question from someone who doesn't have children and so doesn't really know.) It's interesting that a game would be "safe" on one platform but not another.
Roblox isn't so much a "game" as a platform for making games. Think Gmod. As a result, the more "creative freedom" you have, the more the often teen+ aged developers do what people that age do with creative freedom.
Maybe spam messages, cuss words, obscene figures and stuff
Games on PS4 are way safer. It's like a restricted platform.
Comparing Rocket League's chat on PC and PS4 is enough to know the difference. While playing on your PC, you can quickly abuse/spam the other player because you have a keyboard to type on. Because PS4 only has a virtual keyboard, you don't have enough time to use the controller to type whatever you want. You have to use some preloaded custom messages like 'Nice Shot', 'Excellent Save!'
This is a great question - and something that I think people need to be more aware of. As another commenter pointed out - safe for children could be an issues where blackmail and extortion / sextortion could be an issue -
for some parents, finding that on a PS3 while playing mine craft that another person created a giant penis on the screen would make that game 'unsafe'. (I had that happen some years ago - had not idea what to say)
I've heard kids playing call of duty online that cussed and degraded people worse than some x-rated movies.. (and I've also played and heard a kid say 'gosh darn it, they got me'.
anything with chat, anything with user generated content, can be abused to be 'unsafe' in some ways - determining what level of outrage one could encounter / and how uncomfortable one would be is a thing.
editing to add: what some others in the thread have mentioned about kill / guns / cops / etc in some of the games are also a thing for some parents and 'safety' - some might not see any of that in some games / levels that people play in roblox and assume it's not a thing.
I'd also mention some of my associates would have concern that some are based on things outside the game that may include certain levels of cross dress and other things. What is 'safety issue' for some may be a bonus issue for another - so yes, defining types of safety I think is important.
I think the focus needs to be on preventing blackmail/extortion/cyber.
I'm not worried about my daughter or son seeing a crudely constructed penis on the screen, I'm worried about someone sending them age-inappropriate or dangerous private messages. I was consuming sexually explicit content by age nine or ten, had my secret copy of Grand Theft Auto, etc. and at no point was I in any "danger" other than running against the Puritan sensibilities of my guardians.
I remember thinking that the fact that my male Sims couldn't wear female clothes as unnecessarily restrictive, but looking back if my guardians had seen me playing a game as a male wearing a dress, they would have destroyed the game in front of me immediately. "Unsafe" is a considerably relative term.
Predators will attack anywhere that children gather. Children gather in Roblox, and predators targeted Roblox.
The features that make something more or less safe are the controls put around preventing that from happening, minimising the risk, being very clear to parents about what's expected of them, having excellent moderation, and having excellent reporting.
The PC version of roblox fails all of these somewhat.
Many parents today are simply a bit too trusting of products aimed at children. This thing isn't going to expose my children to predators; my kids aren't going to learn about gang rape from this game; this toy isn't going to record audio or video; etc.
I don't necessarily think parents need to ban Roblox, because that means you can't teach children about how to keep themselves safe or what to do if they're not enjoying something happening online. But I do think parents need to be aware of what happens.
Good comment. We are very glad that Xbox/console has the chat and messaging (essentially Xbox has it disabled) controls. We only let our 8 year old daughter play Roblox on Xbox One for this reason.
Thanks. My kids would probably play it on their iPads (we don't even have a PC). Most of their iPad games offer in-app purchases already or force them to watch commercials. It's the messaging that concerns me most.
My kid play on her tablet or iPhone (mostly). I notice there is a chat window, but don't think she pays much attention to it. She and her friends use facetime for in-game communication.
My number one concern is predictors so I'll address that part.
You can turn off "chat" with anyone other than your child's friends. You're kid can be in a group chat with their friend and other strangers, which I'm not delighted about.
Downside #1 is that anyone can send a friend request and your child can accept them. Whenever I go into my kid's account I do a friend review - "How do you know this person?". My child also always has a dozen pending "friends" requests from as-far-as-I-know complete strangers which I decline for her.
Downside #2 is that Roblox can have odd restrictions if "chat" is turned off - you can't give your pets names "Adopt Me" for example.
(I have a 10 year old daughter) While nothing is completely 'safe', I feel that Roblox does a better job than just about any other platform I've looked at in making a safe and still social online environment for kids. The biggest problem is players trying to scam each other in in-game trades.
The worst we've experience is that my daughter lost a pet worth about $5 in real money to a scammer. And while it was pretty traumatic for her it was also a very teachable moment that let us talk a lot about trusting strangers on the internet. We also regularly monitor what she does spend a lot of time talking about being safe on the internet.
Being scammed is kind of a right of passage on the internet right? I lost my Neopets account to a scam and sadly still fell for a scam on Runescape years later. I learned from both experiences though.
TBH I wished I looked this up a long time ago, by default if a child creates an account it doesn't put them through any kind of "get a parent" workflow. (Contrast with signing up for a child Xbox account or Google account).
I have found it safe for the kids on all platforms. There seemed to be a fair amount of censorship in the chat to protect kids from most of THOSE awkward conversations.
That being said, some of the popular games are shooters, murder mysteries, that, while not gory, do have you shooting (lego-minifig-like) people.
I would say watch some gameplay videos and see what you think.
Our other two (younger) kids loved it... past tense here because we had to cut it off for all because it was too emotionally traumatizing for the 11yr old, plus some of the content was questionable.
You can turn off chat.
The games can be... err... interesting. People shooting guns at each other and other such things.
Just keep an eye on it.
Remember the crap you saw/did on IRC as a kid.
You can turn off all ability for the child to chat in games and lock those setting behind a Pin #. Then you don't have to worry about inappropriate messaging etc. After than, it's about as safe as an online world can be, which is to say there's assholes everywhere, and Roblox is no different. If you're playing a capture the flag game, it's possible to have another player grief you with spawn camping etc.
My daughter (now 12) played a lot of Roblox, and mostly it was fine. She seemed able to avoid the shadier parts and, as a parent, you trust the child-friendly features.
However, controls are subverted (for example, by using special characters to get through language filters), and my daughter fell victim to exploitation that moved from Roblox innocence, to instagram, porn, and one-on-one calls. Fortunately we caught it (in time?). Police traced it back to international gangs that prey on the innocent. The trail, at least for us, went cold as there is a request to police in a country (we were not told which) by ours (UK), that is unlikely to be followed up.
Roblox was a big thing for her, and the events that started there were traumatic for the whole family.
Roblox is extremely popular and a really good platform. I'm not going to go on a crusade to try and chance peoples' minds, but Roblox is not as kid-friendly as one would think. It suffers, as all digital social platforms do, with uncontrollable, mis-understood, and untraceable actions by bad actors, that are used for nefarious purposes.