‘One of the worst things to happen to childhood’: Parents concerned Roblox will slip through gaps in online safety crackdown

‘One of the worst things to happen to childhood’: Parents concerned Roblox will slip through gaps in online safety crackdown Roblox is played by 61 per cent of UK children, according to Ofcom figures - but campaigners are concerned the platform could escape harsh scrutiny as new online safety measures are introduced - Bookmark - CommentsGo to comments Parents and experts have said they are concerned the UK’s online safety crackdown will not do enough to protect children playing on the online gaming platform Roblox. The platform, which allows users to play user-generated games known as ‘experiences’, has been described as an “all you can eat buffet” for predators and “one of the worst things to happen to childhood” by campaigners who spoke to The Independent. Sir Keir Starmer recently announced under-16s will be banned from social media platforms from as early as spring 2027. At the same time, he said the government would put in place restrictions to stop children from live-streaming and prevent strangers from contacting them online on gaming platforms like Roblox. Earlier this month, Roblox unveiled Roblox Kids, aimed at users aged five to eight, and Roblox Select for users aged nine to 15. It said the accounts included a range of measures including age checks and expanded parental controls. A recent study by Ofcom found Roblox reached 61 per cent of UK 8-14-year-olds across one month, making it the top-reaching games app for young people. But it has also been linked to grooming and child exploitation cases. In April, 19-year-old Carlo Tritta was jailed after a “campaign of fear and abuse” against a 14-year-old girl he met on the platform. Parents and experts have told The Independent they do not believe these measures are enough to protect children from both the addictive nature of experiences on Roblox, and from those wishing to meet and harm children. Susie Masterson, 51, said Roblox had initially seemed “harmless” to her when her son created an account several years ago, aged 9. But her husband was wary of the user-generated aspect of the platform and so the couple agreed to have a number of conversations with him to better understand what he was seeing there. To their horror, he told them he was regularly being approached by strangers online, soliciting inappropriate and sensitive information and trying to pull him away to other platforms including Telegram and Discord. “He described it as he was literally being taken down a dark alley, or a dark corner in the space,” she explained. “He said, ‘they asked me to go to this place and I didn’t want to go’”. Ms Masterson’s son told her he hadn’t divulged anything worrying to a stranger online, but said the experiences had left him “uncomfortable”. Following their conversations about the risks of the platform, he decided to stop playing of his own volition. Since then, Ms Masterson says she has seen her friend’s children easily bypass age checks and become victims of scams where their Robux (Roblox’s internal currency) are stolen on the platform. Roblox said independent testing by the Age Check Certification Scheme has found that its age verification system on average achieved an accuracy within 1.4 years for under-18s, and insisted it is not required to buy Robux to play the majority of its games. His experience is far from unusual, according to father and director of the BrainSafe Standard Andrew Wilmot. He described Roblox as “one of the worst things to happen to childhood” and gives workshops to parents and policymakers on the risks on the platform. He says he has seen how easily the platform’s age verification measures can be skirted, and how predators routinely use Robux to encourage children to engage in sexual or inappropriate acts. “As a parent, I can’t stand Roblox,” he said. “Even for children who don’t experience harm at the worst, most catastrophic end, everything about the way the games are designed - which itself comes from Roblox and the way it is monetised - is lifted straight from casino design.” Alongside leading academics, Mr Wilmot has built the BrainSafe Standard, which is a method of analysing how addictive digital products are. These measures include variable reward profiling - where platforms give users unknown rewards and give them “near-miss” messaging to encourage them to keep playing - and temporal boundary erosion, where games have no set end points. As a father, he is also watching how Roblox has transcended the internet and moved into the real world for both his children. He told The Independent the platform is “dominating the social life and conversations” of his nine-year-old, and has come up in games his four-year-old plays with in-person friends. He believes the platform is deeply harmful to children, both from risks of grooming and inappropriate content, and from the addictive nature of the experiences themselves. “We need regulation that isn't just asking Ofcom to look for infinite scroll or or push notifications with something that's been listed,” he said. “We need to be identifying the structural harms and regulating based on those.” Ivana Poku, 42, lives in Scotland with her 10-year-old twin boys. She said they first started playing Roblox aged around six, but she stopped them using it after they were getting “addicted”. Now she has let them back on the platform because it is played by so many of their friends, but has given them strict time limits on it and speaks to them regularly about staying safe from strangers. Erica Thornton is the chief executive of the Breck Foundation, founded in memory of Breck Bednar, a 14-year-old boy who was groomed and murdered by someone he met online. She believes in order to become safer for children, Roblox must restrict all communication between under-18s and strangers of any age. “Breck met his predator via his other friends who had been gaming with him for years,” she said. “If there was no way for them to connect with a stranger, then that would never have happened.” She told The Independent that 10 years ago parents might have noticed a child coming home with new trainers or staying up at night on the phone - signs of potential exploitation they could look out for. But the digital nature of Robux and online currency means exploitation can stay “hidden”. She said parents should be aware of the risks and speak to their children at home about the platform: “Education has to be as strong as regulations” she added. “We talk to children from a very young age about the signs of grooming and about what what to look out for.” A Roblox spokesperson said safety is “foundational” to everything the platform does. It added: “We have robust protections in place that go beyond many other online platforms, including age checks for chat features designed to limit communication between adults and kids they don’t know, and newly launched age-appropriate Roblox Kids and Roblox Select accounts for players under the age of 16.” A government spokesperson said it had announced “world‑first restrictions” on features, including stopping strangers from messaging children on services such as gaming platforms. “This approach will be underpinned by strong and effective age verification checks to make it hard for children to get round safeguards,’ they added. “Predators often make first contact through gaming platforms before grooming children into sharing images on their phones. For this reason, Apple and Google have been given three months to ensure children cannot take, share, or view nude images on their devices." 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