By Julianna Bryant
Julianna is a member of ConnectSafely’s Youth Advisory Council.
When people hear “Roblox,” they often picture a harmless virtual universe— but for those of us who have grown up playing it, the story is more complicated. This post is based on a conversation from a recent ConnectSafely Youth Advisory Council meeting, where a group of teens and young adults came together to talk honestly about their experiences on the platform. We have spent time in Roblox — building, exploring, chatting, and sometimes dealing with things no kid should have to. While there is plenty to love about it, we also see the side that filters and safety settings can’t fix.
When it comes to this Roblox debate, it is a common argument that Roblox is kid-friendly, built for safety, and encourages creativity, all while being equipped with filters and parental controls. While not wrong, these people likely haven’t spent extensive time on the platform as a young person, the most vulnerable and innocent kind of user.
Let’s start with avatars, a blank canvas for self-expression and a mask behind which players can evade consequences. Players have dressed their avatars in chef hats and white robes to resemble KKK costumes. In drawing games, people sketch out swastikas. It’s shocking — or rather, it should be. Yet many of us just sigh and roll our eyes at this point because we’ve been exposed to this behavior so many times. It’s almost expected, and that’s sad, right?
The problem is anonymity. Anyone can be behind a screen name. In real life, people understand who they are talking to and what that entails. On Roblox, someone claiming to be 12 could easily be 40. The safety systems don’t catch everything, and people can easily find ways around them. For example, type “s3x” instead of “sex,” and you’re past the filters in seconds.
In addition to hate symbols and inappropriate jokes, there are scammers and predators. One teen at the meeting recalls getting scammed at 10. She lost a virtual item that she had worked hard for, and cried after feeling like she was actually robbed. When she tried to get help, the person had already blocked her and vanished. She had become so passionate about the game that losses online started to feel like losses in real life.
Some people will say she learned an important lesson and that this virtual thief toughened her up. But here’s the thing: if a kid gets tricked or exposed to something traumatic in real life, we call it what it is — trauma. When it happens online, we’re told to brush it off because “it’s virtual.” That doesn’t make sense. With how much time the younger generation spends online, we need to start realizing that emotional damage is emotional damage, even if the setting is digital.
Let’s be clear. Roblox tries. They implement filters, moderators, reporting systems, and parental controls. However, they just can’t keep up. The platform is too massive and too chaotic.
Questionable behavior is constantly happening, and it can’t be rectified before the damage is done. They rely on users to report inappropriate content, but most of us don’t bother. In addition to most of us growing numb to these comments, if we reported every controversial thing we saw, we would have no time left to play the game!
Another big issue? The age range. 8-year-old players are playing alongside 17-year-old players. That’s a huge gap. A 16-year-old making sexual comments or mature jokes in a chat may have been considered innocent if their audience wasn’t an 8-year-old. But, despite efforts, there is minimal separation, and we are all thrown into the same games, spaces, and chats. That creates a lot of risk, not necessarily because older kids are always being harmful, but because what’s “normal” for a teenager isn’t necessarily safe or healthy for a third grader.
As for our parents’ role in all of this, most of our parents didn’t grow up online the way we did. One of us in the group mentioned their dad buying them GTA V, a fairly violent game, at age seven — not because he was trying to be reckless, but because he didn’t know what it was. Then, even when parents try to set limits or monitor what we do, most of us find workarounds. We make secret accounts, change birthdates, and download content on other devices because of how easy it is to do.
So, what can help protect kids from the dangers of these spaces? Honest conversations with our parents, for one. One of the teens explained that when they feel judged or overly watched, they just get sneakier. But when they feel trusted, they are more likely to speak up when something’s off. For young kids, many of us agree that it’s safer to play with friends you know in real life and, if you play with strangers, to know the red flags to watch out for.
Roblox isn’t the worst thing in the world. It continues to be a fun and creative pastime for us, but it can also expose kids to harassment, sexual comments, violence, and bigotry that no one should just accept as “part of the Internet.” Admitting that the platform is not perfectly safe is the first step to finding solutions that work, so that Roblox can be a safe space for young people to enjoy themselves.
The opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and some other members of ConnectSafely’s Youth Advisory Council. They do not necessarily represent the views of the Council as a whole or ConnectSafely.