Why ROBLOX?

Roblox does provide users with a number of games, created in the same style as Minecraft. There are, however, a number of risks that come with joining this gaming platform.

1. Users must be 18 or older or have your parent or guardian’s consent to agree to their Terms and Conditions.
2. The site claims to filter information on profiles, limiting personal information being posted if the user is under 13 years of age. However, as shown from our own research on the site, this does not always happen. Webwise reported the profile featured below using the Report Abuse feature on the users’ profile for giving out personal information. 
3. Gamers are requested not to use their real name, however, many users we witnessed on the site had usernames that gave both their first name and date of birth, for example, Princessana07. This makes gender and age easily apparent to other users.
4. The platform is integrated with Facebook and Twitter. The potential risk being that younger users may add their gaming friends on other social networking sites.
5. The platform actively encourages users to make anonymous friends.
6. Users of all ages, both gamers, and developers, use the site. This is not a platform aimed at children.
7. The site allows private messaging between anonymous users. This can be done by simply clicking on the username in the chat box.
8. The creators have attempted to make it safer by filtering content in the chat box based on the user’s age. However, while researching the site many safe words and phrases were blocked out with XXXX. This could lead to children creating older profiles to bypass this feature for convenience. There are also creative ways like writing letters in a downwards pattern or substituting letters for similar looking numbers to get around the filtering system.
9. There is no mechanism in place to stop a child from creating an older account.
10. Many of the games have been made by users and may contain adult content or pornographic graphics and skimpy clothing for avatars. Some of the game involved murder, guns and zombie may not be age-appropriate for younger children. The app store attests to having “Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence‘ and ‘Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence‘
11. While reading reviews of the platform on App Store and Play Store many users complain of ‘oders’ which is a shortened form for ‘online dater’- i.e, someone who compliments or is trying to establish a romantic connection via the messaging feature.
12. Cyberbullying is a real threat on these sites, especially due to the anonymity, the ability to create multiple accounts and the chat features. Many users complain about being cyberbullied because they do not have ‘robux’, the currency available to purchase on the platform
13. A number of games do not work without payment being required. While reviewing the site, we encountered a number of pop-ups for additional payment. When clicked, these brought us straight to the payment section of the Play Store or App Store.