Last month, a bipartisan group of senators launched an investigation into Roblox for failing to protect the minors who use its platforms from child predators. I’ve written previously about some of the specific ways Roblox is dangerous for minors and how parents can work to protect their children.
Briefly, Roblox facilitates communication between players, some of whom have bad intentions. Roblox has been sued dozens of times for children being sexually or otherwise physically harmed by people who met them on the platform. They also allow any user to create their own games, many of which are highly inappropriate for children. Their moderation team is insufficient to keep up with millions of users, comments, and games. Many of the moderators of these games are minors themselves.
In the comment section under every article about these harms, someone parrots the same talking point: “Where are the parents? It’s not Roblox’s fault that these irresponsible parents let their children get hurt.”
Of course parents bear responsibility for their children’s safety, but blaming them is misguided.
Roblox promises that it prioritizes child safety and has a reassuring list of steps it has taken to make the games as safe as possible, “partner[ing] with law enforcement, mental health professionals, and global safety experts to guide [its] policies, products, systems, and roadmaps.”
In interviews, they stress that their goal is to make Roblox “the safest platform on the internet” and list a number of reasons parents can feel reassured that their children are safe. It’s easy to imagine a caring but exhausted parent looking at these promises after a long day at work and taking Roblox’s words at face value.
Over a third of parents don’t use any of the safety controls on the platform, presumably trusting that a game company that claims to prioritize safety would create a safe online space for kids. Almost a fourth of Millennial parents aren’t even aware that parental controls exist in Roblox. (I recommend that parents enable parental controls, review the available options, and disable communication from strangers.)
I can imagine several reasons that good parents could make choices that would expose their children to harm. For example:
Some parents probably know that the game is popular with their child’s friends and classmates, think to themselves, “It’s just a game, how bad could it be?” and let their kid play. They never find out that the game allows strangers to talk to their children.
Others are more wary and do some more research. They go to Roblox’s website, click “Safety Center,” and read that Roblox takes content moderation seriously, that they partner with law enforcement and use sophisticated systems to make sure that all inappropriate content is restricted, and are reassured. They never learn that the moderation system is woefully insufficient.
Why would someone who believes Roblox’s talking points look for ways to make their children’s experience safer?
Even when parents are involved, know to be careful, and set appropriate parental controls, it’s still too easy to circumvent them. Signing up for a fresh Roblox account with no restrictions takes less than a minute and doesn’t even require an email address. Their new age verification system is laughably easy to get around.
That’s why I wrote a book explaining video games to parents, because many parents don’t know about issues like this. They can’t protect their children against threats they don’t know to watch for.
Ultimately, parents are responsible for their children’s well-being. However, they can only protect against threats they know about. Roblox and other games and platforms have a moral obligation to protect children. As they have proven unwilling to take reasonable steps to do so, I believe it is our collective responsibility to force them to. I’m glad that lawmakers are starting to take this seriously.