[RyanHamilton]

This is a sympton of something worse. The bigger issue: Roblox isn’t the real problem, it’s filling the gap left by the disappearance of unstructured, unsupervised play in the physical world.

Kids used to build worlds, take risks, and form friendships outdoors. Now many have no safe places to roam, no peers outside scheduled activities, and no cultural permission to be on their own. So they do all that in Roblox instead.

You can tighten access control, but it won’t change the core dynamic: when real childhood spaces shrink, digital platforms become the default playground. Until kids have room to be independent offline, they’ll keep escaping online.

[pupppet]

I don't buy this. Roblox like most games these days employ dark patterns to keep kids hooked, the real world can't compete with the online casino.

We had Nintendo, but those games had an ending. Today's online games don't end.

[maksum]

Can’t both be true? It can be true that Roblox keeps kids hooked through shady practices but if not them, kids would have sought other places. Club Penguin, RuneScape, WOW, Xbox Live, all served similar functions for myself growing up, I don’t find it hard to believe I would have ended up on Roblox

[danny_codes]

None of those platforms are for gambling.

[RyanHamilton]

I would agree it's both. Ideally we would make many games restricted access and most games games less addictive. At this stage the only viable plan I can think of is for parents to join a cult or cult like group where the parents are dedicated to restricted screen time and enforcing outdoor play. One parent alone can't make it happen. Maybe the quakers were onto something. :)

[nh23423fefe]

this feels wrong to me. when i watch my 7yo cousin play, he is talking to his friends in a virtual space and playing volleyball or racing cars or playing golf or doing a fashion show.

the cosmetics are stupid, but thats not the main thrust.

the real world can't compete because its expensive and devoid of children.

[gffrd]

> and devoid of children

YES! This is a big piece of it. Fewer kids + more of them wanting to be inside / parents wanting them to be inside = less kids to play with = even less likelihood of them wanting to play outside.

This is like social media in reverse: nobody wants to be inside, but some people are only inside, so everybody is inside.

[Tanoc]

My father might've been onto something in my childhood then. He'd specifically kick me out of the house if he knew it was day I'd be inside playing videogames. Rainy day, snow day, school holiday, missed the bus, whatever the reason. He did this the first time when I was ten and then again when I was fourteen, which were two periods where I struggled with making friends because we had moved.

I compare this to my neighbour's daughter who is now about the same age I was when my dad would kick me out of the house, and said neighbour's daughter never goes anywhere without her parents. She's somewhat socially maladjusted and doesn't know how to get along with other kids her age outside of sports, and I believe this is because she's not around other kids outside of school except for basketball practice or matches she's in. She wasn't like this a few years ago. It's alarming how such an athletic child can spend so much time inside the house doing... Whatever sedentary activities.

[Wolfenstein98k]

Last bit is not quite right: a lot of people want to be inside. That contributes strongly to the feedback loop you rightly identify.

(WHY they want to stay inside is another matter, but I suspect a large part is the stereotypical answer: unending seas of digital content highly optimised to hack the consumer's brain.)

[theshrike79]

It's a parental thing.

I have children, they have friends. None of them have asked for Robux as a gift.

They play the free games together, chatting after school (and homework!) and stop if they hit a payment limit.

Kids can't be trapped by "dark patterns" into paying, they don't have credit cards or money to spend. It's always the parents who give in.

[renjimen]

It's both disappearing opportunities for physical play AND addictive platforms

[endgame]

And one feeds the other, in that it's hard to raise a kid who can play constructively outdoors if all of his friends are hooked on Roblox.

[bradlys]

As if arcade games weren’t money hungry and painfully punishing purely to get more quarters out of children.

[pupppet]

Arcades got you out of the house, they had a communal aspect to them, you played games together. Those quarters were well spent!

[cwmoore]

I couldn't get a quarter out of my dad as a kid. Who's fault is the parents?

[vibrio]

If I mowed 2 acres of lawn dad would give me a stack of quarters. It didn’t take me long to realize that a fraction of that mowing time spent playing Defender would consume those quarters. I still loved playing it, but valuable perspective.

[phendrenad2]

Name checks out. There's some kind of weird non-sequitur going around almost verbatim: "Roblox keeps kids paying for cosmetics, therefore it's at fault if creeps creep on kids there" (as though it would be somehow better if Roblox were just accidentally popular with kids, and creeps crept on them there? Wat?)

[Etheryte]

This is an easy argument to make, but I don't think it actually applies in any way. Roblox is just as popular in countries where these things have not disappeared.

[jasonfarnon]

What countries do you have in mind?

[watwut]

Germany, Japan, France, basically majority of Europe.

[plastic-enjoyer]

Oh dear

[rusk]

Good contribution

[Wolfenstein98k]

All the listed countries have low fertility rates, increasing screentime rates, etc.

I suspect if you cornered a parent of a 2yo in any of those countries, they would not say it is meaningfully more social and child-friendly TODAY that the USA is, or Australia (for which I can speak) is.

[ninalanyon]

I'm a parent in Norway (though not of a two year old). Children really do have a great deal of freedom and the country is very child friendly and safe. But still online games are displacing physical outdoor play. However the majority of children attend barnehage (kindergarten) where there are no screens and outdoor play is strongly encouraged (and only lightly supervised) so at least for pre-school children there is still a lot of physical activity.

[LtWorf]

sweden

[pjmlp]

Sorry for being blunt, isn't this mostly an US phenomen?

Around most European countries kids are pretty much still playing outside as they feel like it, without having some neighbour call the police due to bad parenting or whatever it happens to be.

[GaryBluto]

I live in Europe and I rarely see kids or teenagers outside.

[pjmlp]

Me as well, maybe travel a bit around.

Note the sibling comments asserting the same as I am.

[xg15]

That sounds like a cheap attempt to deflect from tech's responsibility in that matter.

Decades ago, kids might have met in unsafe areas as well: maybe hang out in an abandoned building or whatever. But there wasn't yet a trillion dollar business deliberately creating abandoned buildings to hang out in.

[gyomu]

This comment feels like a reference to the recently posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945114

[watwut]

Kids do not want to go outside. Even if parents want it and push for it, youtube, whatsapp, roblox, fortnite, whatever they have from steam is much more fun.

[defrost]

More accurately the kids you're aware of don't want to.

Where I am kids seem to love the outside, they're all over the plygrounds, they like driving quad bikes and tractors, they prefer to fly drones IRL under the sky than inside on a screen, they're still playing football and netball. Hitting a target at a thousand yards is still more fun IRL than not.

Our grandkids and their generation started welding, carpentry, glassblowing, metal casting etc. from five or so onwards, most are 13 to 16 now, still being forced to use paper maps to navigate, but allowed to collect track data on GPS recorders and overlay tat on GIS maps at night, etc.

Takes a bit of effort, the connection between real world interaction and reward has to be maintained, winding back network access to a quiet minimum helps.

Some will gravitate toward woodchopping for content rather than twitch streaming running about a virtual world.

[lanfeust6]

Kids want to go outside if other kids are outside. We are social animals, and the most addictive games for youth are glorified social networks. It helps if other parents in the area are on the same page.

[R_D_Olivaw]

To be fair, we've sort f made outside really, really shitty.

Stroads and parking lots galore ain't all that appealing (or safe) to play in.

[potato3732842]

Kids never want to go outside. My parents locked me out until dinner. Worked fine.

[lanfeust6]

Yeah I was periodically booted out. My only gripe with it is there were few others around. My closest friend and I mostly played video games in the living room.

[crazydoggers]

While those may or may not be issues, I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Child abuse and pedophilia has been a scourge on children since at least Ancient Greek times when it was well documented and I’m sure even longer than that.

I believe the estimates are one in six children before the age of 16 will encounter sexual abuse of some form. Yet when cases like Epstein reach the news, people act shocked, even though it should be clear this occurs at every level of our society.

Ultimately it requires vigilance on the part of all of us and our institutions, and an awareness of how these predators operate. Even if you shut down one avenue they’ll find another.

So let’s not let those who turn blind eyes continue to be part of the problem but hold them accountable. Only then can we reduce all the avenues.