Roblox isn’t a game.

That’s not an exaggeration or a cute introduction. Roblox isn't a game, it's a platform which hosts user-made games. Roblox makes it easy to make your own game and release it to the public, with little to no oversight. So when a young person tells me they’re playing Roblox, I know I have to follow up by asking which game they’re playing on the platform. Some are appropriate, some are not. Some are mindless, some are dangerous. And with tens of millions of games available, I’m almost never familiar with the one they’ve been playing recently.

I’ve written previously about video games’ benefits for stress reduction, usefulness in building motivation and positive social spaces, and how they can be used to help teach kids to read. I even use them with my clients in the therapy room. I love video games. But Roblox scares me.

Roblox is currently being sued in at least thirty-five different lawsuits alleging that they facilitated communication between young children and adults who groomed children, exposed them to inappropriate content, and blackmailed them, in some cases leading to suicide.

Hindenburg Research, a group that investigates companies for investors, created accounts claiming to be minors and explored various games available to their selected age group. They were so shocked by their findings that they concluded that Roblox was “an X-rated pedophile hellscape, exposing children to grooming, pornography, violent content and extremely abusive speech.”

Roblox has a number of features available to game developers, including every psychological trick that would make a game habit-forming. Because Roblox makes it easy to find and play a variety of games, game developers must find creative ways to keep users’

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