Across the world, parents of children who play Roblox have become wary of the popular video game due to recent controversies regarding child safety.
There have been over 35 lawsuits against Roblox regarding their lack of child safety. The most notable lawsuits include the State Attorneys of Texas, Louisiana and Kentucky filing against Roblox for failing to protect children against online predators.
For example, a young girl was taken from her home in the middle of the night, taken out of state and sex trafficked by a man she met on Roblox. The FBI found the young girl 36 hours after her kidnapping.
Senior and avid Roblox player Hailey Jasso provides her own experiences of predatory behavior that she has come across on Roblox: “I’ve experienced it hundreds of times. I’ve been playing Roblox for almost ten years now. While not every predator is trying to groom kids, it is not safe for children to be around possibly explicit and predatory images, conversations and behavior.”
The controversy that caused further issues for Roblox is about a YouTuber named Michael Schlep, who played Roblox from a very young age and even developed his own games. He ended up getting groomed by a popular creator on the platform and almost took his own life because of it. Now, Schlep performs successful sting operations to catch predators on Roblox to prevent more children from having an experience like his, and he has already made six arrests.
Roblox CEO David Baszucki took notice of Schlep’s legal operation and decided to ban Schlep from the video game, accusing him of being a vigilante on the platform. Now, Chris Hansen, host of the TV show “To Catch a Predator,” is working closely with Schlep to create a documentary about Roblox.
Jasso explains, “If an app made for children’s entertainment is coming under heavy criticism because it’s being accused of being a ‘safe haven’ for predators to lurk, then the accusation should be handled with a level of professionalism. Any accusation where a multibillion-dollar company is putting real-life children in danger of grooming/predators is a serious one, especially with the population of children who play Roblox due to it being one of the only free, well-developed children’s sites. Your top priority as a CEO is to protect the children in an app made for children.”
Baszucki has also made many controversial comments about the Roblox platform, the most prominent being his adamant stance on adding dating for ages 17 and older. Many have pointed out that 17 is still the age of a minor; this argument gained so much traction that Baszucki decided to go back on his word. But, instead of scrapping the entire idea, he decided to change it to the legal age, where age verification will be required.
During an interview with Baszucki regarding child safety, a joke was made by the interviewer about adding child gambling to Roblox, and Baszucki seemed very open to the idea. After the interviewer explained that he was only joking about adding gambling elements into the video game, Baszucki doubled down and explained that it would still be a beneficial idea.
To try to combat some of the backlash Roblox is facing, Baszucki has decided to add an AI age estimation feature, where AI estimates the age of users by requiring them to provide a photo of themselves; then, AI will do a facial scan to “verify” age. However, AI does not always estimate the correct age of the player.
Moving forward, Roblox says it will implement more AI technology to help combat the predatory issues on its platform. Parents are now aware of the controversies happening on Roblox and can choose to be the judges of what content their children consume on the internet.
