What Is Roblox and Is Roblox Safe For Kids?

The excitement surrounding Roblox will likely be heard a lot in homes with teens. Worldwide, Roblox Corporation had more than 52.2 million daily active players in the 2nd quarter of 2022.

So, there is a good chance that your child has the Roblox site on their phone, tablet, PC, or Xbox. However, with millions of children logging on to Roblox every day, it’s important to ask: is Roblox safe for kids? The answer is not as simple as a yes or no.

It's a question many parents ask. In this article, we will address everything you need to know about Roblox, including whether it is Safe for kids or not.

What Is Roblox?

Roblox is a vast multiplayer online game creation platform where kids can create and interact with their own games and experiences using custom tools.

Designers and publishers can create games with simple tools. By doing so, they can test ideas that won't be funded for commercialization. On Roblox, an online game creator system, most of the content is designed by amateur game developers.

The site offers a wide variety of online games for all ages. Here, you can play games designed by others and games you have created yourself. People who want to create new games will find it an excellent platform. Roblox Studio lets you build your own games while playing in a fun open Roblox world.

There are many popular games on the site, including Adopt Me! MeepCity, and Work at a Pizza Place, all with billions of user visits. Upon signing up, you will be able to play unlimited games, share your creations, voice chat, text chat with other users, and more.

The game is available on smartphones, PCs, tablets, Xbox one, etc., and accessibility is the main reason for interaction.

The constant change in Roblox's game collection is one of the reasons it is so popular. Furthermore, it has a billion times more conducive environment for younger players than competing against millions of opponents.

Kids like it for the following reasons:

• Create Own 3D World
• Customizing Avatar
• Meet Different Community
• Playing Multiple Games

Is Roblox Safe for Kids?

Although Common Sense Media says, the age restriction for Roblox users is 13 years, over 54% of all Roblox users are children under 13.

However, that doesn’t mean there are only kids. Some online predators and scammers may be there who can manipulate your kids. Moreover, the availability of games containing violence and sexual content makes Roblox's hidden dangers for most kids.

Further, your underage children might get exposed to sexual harassment, spoofing attacks, cyber crimes, and online bullying on the internet while playing Roblox.

Playing games like Prison Escape, Shark Attack, and Disaster Survival can enjoy quick competitive rounds of adult scenarios.

Kids may experience four key risks while exploring, playing, and creating in the virtual world of Roblox: getting contacted by ill-intentioned adults, encountering inappropriate adult content, being bullied online by their peers, and spending too much money on Roblox.

So, Are kids safe on Roblox? No, Roblox is not safe for Children.

Experts' thoughts on Roblox's risks for parents

The interactive nature of the game Roblox and its features, such as chat boxes, make it a potentially risky game for parents to allow their children to play.

In light of reports of sexually-suggestive material in the game and explicit depictions of sexual assault in the characters, some parents are growing increasingly concerned about the game. In the event of such a case, experts recommend the following warnings for parents:

Interactions on any multiplayer platform can be problematic.

Josh Nelson, campaign director at ParentsTogether, a U.S. organization dedicated to families, stated to yahoo sports that “while many of the interactions children will have on Roblox are with other children, like many interactive platforms, there are also adults—including child predators—lurking on Roblox."

Additionally, he mentions that some cases have revealed a dilemma in which some invaders use Roblox to start chatting prior to switching to another app that lets images be sent, like Snapchat.

Titania Jordan, the author of Parenting in a Tech World, cites a case out of the United Kingdom in which a mother discovered that her son had been manipulated by online predators on the platform, resulting in inappropriate images being sent via a third-party chat app.

" Condo games or scented games" may contain inappropriate content for children.

Josh Nelson points out that parents should be aware of the key risks of “condo games.” These user-created games include fictional sex acts, inappropriate language, and graphic images.

"While Roblox has taken steps to crack down on these games, they continue to pop up, effectively forcing the company to play whack-a-mole," he writes.

Roblox’s community claims that the sites don’t promote any sexual content or activity of such kind. However, experts say that it can be difficult to keep up with all the inappropriate content being removed by the platform.

Furthermore, the senior editor of video games at Common Sense Media, Jeff Haynes, stated at 7news that “This is basically a game of Whack-a-Mole, whereby every single time they try to take down one or two different games, 12 to 20 get popped back up within a matter of minutes.”

How Is Roblox Addressing Safety Concerns?

As a solution to problems, Roblox emphasized that its platform focuses on making safety a priority since it was initially designed for kids and teens. "We have a responsibility to make sure our players can learn, create, and play safely," states Tami Bhaumik, Vice President of Digital Civility, Roblox. "This continues to be our most important priority, which will never change."

Further, in an interview conducted by SWGFL, Laura Higgins, Director of Civility and Community Safety for the massive online gaming platform, stated that “We have a human review team that checks for safety in a variety of languages and looks for chat behaviors that clearly indicate an attempt to take a player from our platform to another, less restrictive third-party chat platform.”

Further, for Roblox users who are below 13, filters like blocking personal information and contact numbers are even stricter.

This gaming platform also doesn’t allow sending pictures or videos through chat or one-to-one user interaction.

Parents and kids can control their children's accounts through Roblox's safety features. You can enable secure chat to block offensive and inappropriate conversations on the platform. In accordance with the user's age, they can change their privacy settings and access different games. Age groups or ranges have different privacy settings.

A safe chat might not provide complete security for young children but adds a layer of protection. In-game and in-app, account owners may control what messages are sent, follow them into games, or invite them to private servers.

How can you keep Roblox safe for your kids?

Having honest and open interactions with your children about technology is always a good thing to protect your children. Further, apply the following measures if you think your children are engaged in inappropriate things while they play games on Roblox.

Use third-party parental Control Apps.

Use parental control applications like Fenced.ai to ensure your child's online safety. It helps you to monitor every phone activity of your child remotely.

Since most children use a mobile device while playing Roblox, parents can install the application to track their child's activities. Further, you can set restrictions on your child’s device and limit screen time using the Fenced.ai parental control application. So you can make sure that they are not playing more than necessary or are safe on other social platforms.

However, the best thing that concerned parents can do is educate their children about internet safety and ensure they know what to do if they encounter a troubling situation. Keeping your child safe in the Roblox world is easier with it.

Use Roblox’s parental controls.

To use the parental controls of Roblox, you need to have the login credentials of your child's account.

Once you know the login information, you can make Roblox safer for your kids by following these steps.

• Go to Roblox's account and sign in.
• In the upper right corner, click the gear icon.
• Go to Privacy under Account Settings.
• Ensure your child uses the game safely by changing the Contact and Other Settings.

You can change a child's interaction inside the game, their ability to message and chat with them, and their ability to contact them. It is essential to guard against potential scammers or bullies inside the game.

Roblox Parental controls allow parents to choose games for their children based on their interests. Additionally, the account PIN can be enabled on the Security page. You can use this PIN to stop your child from making any changes to the account that you don't want them to make, such as changing parental controls.

Remind children who are permitted to chat to stick to safety precautions.

To create a safe game experience for children under 13, a safe chat feature is turned on automatically at the time. If you think your child is grown up enough to handle unrestricted chat, you can turn off safe chat features for them.

Gaming risks can negatively impact your children’s life. Teach your child not to talk with strangers in the real and gaming worlds. Also, ensure they are not sending messages to any unknown person or replying to them.

Educate them not to give others any personal information; if someone makes them uncomfortable, share it with you. Transparency is always preferable between parents and their children.

Don't let children play in a closed room.

"It's best that kids play Roblox games with their parents in a family area where they can watch, rather than in their bedrooms. So, whenever you find something fishy, you can guide them. Further, you can also play Roblox with your children to better understand them.

Be open to communication.

Whether you use a parental control application or not to monitor your child on the Roblox platform, experts suggest having direct communication. If children sum up their feelings inside them, they can suffer from mental health problems.

Ensure that you are always there for your children; if they encounter anything online that does not seem right, they should speak up.

As they also recommended, "Having these conversations regularly and regularly checking to see how your child is doing on the platform can aid you to find any issues that might arise. It helps to protect your kids from the problems of other games.

Read More: Is TikTok safe for kids?

How can you see what your child is doing on Roblox?

Parents are concerned about the safety of their kids online. Roblox offers multiple ways to see your kid’s account activities to remove such stress. View the following activities from your Roblox account by logging in to it.

• Group Messages and Private Messages (Tap on the Chat feature to see chat history at the lower right corner after logging in)
• Recently played games.
• Private message history
• Trade history and purchases of virtual items.
• Children's creations can be games, items, or sounds.

Conclusion

Anyone can be at risk online, and young children can easily fall prey. There can never be total security for anyone on the internet, but Roblox's approach is a bit heartless.

While it shirkers from many responsibilities when it comes to protecting its customers from harassment, sexual and otherwise, it also exploits child’s naivete regarding work and money. It may be time to talk with your child about the issues and even consider alternatives if your child plays Roblox or creates games for the platform.

After reading all this, are you still wondering, “Is Roblox safe for kids?” If you make good use of the parental control features and keep an eye on what your child is doing, Roblox is reasonably safe.

FAQs

Why is Roblox so bad?

As Roblox is an online gaming platform where users can communicate with each other, you do not have any control over the platform. Sometimes, your kids may encounter ill-mannered people, witness violence, or be bullied.

Which age is appropriate for playing Roblox?

Roblox does not have an official age limit for kids. But Common Sense Media says it's fine for 13+ users based on continuing content challenges. However, it could be OK for kids younger than that if kids' activities on the platform are closely monitored by parents and turn on account restrictions.."

Does Roblox cost a lot?

Downloading and playing Roblox is free, but in-game purchases are available, aptly named “ Robux.”