Where Can Children Be Safe Online?: The Issue of Roblox and Their Predatory Practices

Julianna Concepcion | Opinion Writer

Im winning / Photo by 'YuriArcursPeopleimages', licensed by Envato

I remember when kid-friendly technology looked like Nintendo DSs, Wii’s, LeapFrog’s, and the games on my mom’s phone. At twenty-one years old, I believe I grew up in a time when tech for kids was normalized, yet still kid- and family-friendly. We once valued the idea of technological literacy in a changing world when it came to education for children, but now it has gotten to a point where we cannot rely on large corporations that provide these tech advancements to children. Instead, they have put more and more emphasis on the commodification of kids’ spaces and more generalized audiences, exposing children to the dangers of mixing adult and children’s virtual spaces. One corporation that has become the guiltiest of this is Roblox.   

Roblox is a platform in which players can join different “experiences” and create their own worlds for these experiences. These worlds can range from role-playing games, simulators, FPS shooters, and more, while also being advertised as child-appropriate and protective of its users. However, it seems that as of recently, they have not held up their promises of keeping their users safe.    

As one can imagine, Roblox’s unique game genre and popularity have made it attractive to a wide variety of users, with their userbase seemingly being almost equally kid and adult. Users are allowed to chat with one another both through text and voice chat, meaning that people of all ages can socialize and interact. While I wish that this was nothing but innocent banter between children and adults, there is actually a lot of danger that comes with this social freedom.    

Both text and voice chat are moderated, but not nearly enough for it to be sufficient in protecting users from various predators. Words work in funny ways—while you can’t curse or use other explicit language, there are ways in which predators can allude to things and use innuendo to get their points across before moderators even think to look in their direction.    

Voice chat seems to be even less moderated than text chat. Available to users who are 13+, users must have their accounts show their 13+ age and phone verified, or they may show their ID to prove their age. These seem to be easy to get past, but not as easy as Roblox’s “age estimation” feature. Users may take a selfie and send it to Roblox, and Roblox verifies the photo and their visual age if the user looks to be 13+. There are a variety of issues that I can think of regarding this, one being: what if a child is younger than thirteen, but whoever (or whatever) verifies the image believes the child is at least thirteen? This would mean that those under the “appropriate” age would be allowed to join these voice chat experiences.   

Even then, thirteen still seems far too young to be speaking in chats that could expose them to adult strangers. It is odd to believe that this feels anything close to safe for children with these rules and methods being so unreliable. Their lack of moderation has even led to sexually explicit experiences falling under the radar for long periods of time. There have been a lot of experiences that create animations for players to use that mimic sexual acts, and those same experiences have voice chat enabled. I’ll let you assume what gripes I have with this. While these experiences eventually are banned, they usually aren’t until days, weeks, and even months have passed.   

The Roblox CEO himself has even pitched the idea of Roblox having dating experiences for 18+ users. When knowing how lenient they have been with age restrictions for voice chat, I am doubtful that there will be sufficient care taken to prevent younger users from using these features. I also don’t think it is appropriate to have the game in the first place—this game should be kept as an online space for kids, not tampered with to draw in adult audiences, further exposing kids to the threats of online predators.   

This neglect for safety has led to an onslaught of criticism against Roblox, with one YouTuber under the name “Schlep” acting against Roblox predators. Working with another known predator-catching YouTuber, JiDion, he creates fake accounts and leads predators to believe that he is a minor, baiting them into a meet-up. Shlep then confronts them and attempts to get the predator to admit to their malice, which has led to multiple arrests.     

Roblox has since threatened legal action against Schelp, sending him a cease and desist stating that he is not allowed or entitled to take this issue of predatory behavior on the platform into his own hands, and has since banned him from the platform indefinitely. This goes to show that Roblox is nowhere near remorseful for their drastic missteps, even doubling down and claiming that Roblox is just as safe as they say it is.    

The truth is, Roblox seems to have allowed their greed to get in the way of their dedication to safety. As of this year, their net worth has risen to about $71 billion dollars, their market cap increasing by 154% in just one year. It seems that they believe that if they strike the hammer down on predators on their platform, they would be losing the oh-so-precious dollars they get from these users. They don’t care even a little about child safety—only what fills their pockets the fastest.    

Roblox’s lack of action against predatory behavior on their platform has drawn in a lot of unwanted attention towards other issues, such as their lack of regulation on in-game spending. Many popular experiences on the platform engage in “pay to win” features, some notable experiences being BloxFruits, Adopt Me!, and Bloxburg. These experiences encourage real-life spending, some purchases costing upwards of $100 USD. Other experiences also include gacha-like features, where users may spend real-life money on Robux (the in-game currency) to spin a wheel and potentially get large payoffs, which can range from in-experience currencies, items, and other objects to get ahead.  

People have compared this to gambling. Users who are younger are more prone to the immediate gratification of spending money on these larger payoffs. Since most younger children cannot understand or conceptualize the value of money, it seems that developers for many of these experiences attempt to take advantage of this. It doesn’t seem appropriate to encourage children to spend money on a game that has little to no meaning and is another form of predation.   

These reasons are why many parents are no longer allowing their children to play Roblox. Although it is deeply disappointing to realize that child safety is not at the forefront of a corporation like Roblox’s ideals, it is good to expose and speak about where their priorities lie. Without this, more and more children would be exposed to this lack of protection and potentially be hurt and exploited. The lack of child-friendly spaces these days has become extremely prevalent in 2025, and it needs to be called out and addressed.