Your Kids are in Danger: Popular Kids' Game Wants to Include Adult Dating
Have you ever heard of Roblox? If your answer is yes, you're probably thinking of a video game for young children. And you are right in that assumption, since roughly 40% of Roblox users are below the age of 13. This qualifies the game as being aimed at children and warrants taking precautionary measures to protect its young players. In recent months, Roblox CEO David Baszucki has presented a vision for the game that should send alarm bells ringing for every parent.
Roblox: A Dating Hub for Adults?
According to Baszucki, we are currently experiencing a loneliness epidemic. So far, so good. Increased loneliness, especially among young adults, is a well-documented phenomenon. Where things go wrong, however, is in Baszucki's proposed solution. He believes that Roblox could fill the gap and combat loneliness by serving as a virtual dating platform for adults, specifically those 21 years and older.
He sees the game as a potential "wellness platform" to "help loneliness and bring connection". And if Roblox wasn't already an established platform primarily used by kids, that idea may not sound as outlandish as it does right now. Virtual dating could be a way for socially anxious individuals to find a partner. I've seen it many times. People meet in an online game and develop a deeper connection outside of the game. However, those games are usually targeted at adults, not children.
And given Roblox's dubious history when it comes to child safety, the idea of turning it into a dating platform for adults goes from outlandish to downright dangerous. It's a sad reality that online spaces made for children will always attract those with unsavory proclivities. According to police data presented by Bloomberg, Roblox has a serious pedophile problem. One horrific case involved the abduction and repeated abuse of a 15-year-old girl, who connected with her abductor through Roblox.
Attracting more adults to the game will, most certainly, increase the likelihood of children being targeted by pedophiles and groomers. Even if the dating side of things is, in theory, entirely inaccessible to children, who's to say that adults with bad intentions won't migrate over to the kids' portion of the game? No matter how effective the separation between the two ends up being, marketing the game to adults will likely attract a surge of bad actors who are now acutely aware and even welcomed by the game.
How Baszucki Wants to Protect Children
Baszucki does not seem to recognize the severity of the issue at hand. He insists that children can be kept safe through age verification via ID and AI moderation, which will make grooming a problem of the past. But what stops a young girl from using her mother's ID when signing up for the service? How would AI go about differentiating between grooming and flirting, which would more than likely be encouraged on a dating platform?
When you look at other games aimed at children, you'll find that kids are astonishingly good at finding ways around restrictions. Introduce, for example, a new filter that bans the use of certain words. Within hours, young players will have found a way to circumvent it. And since Roblox Dating is supposed to facilitate offline dates, there will likely be a way to share phone numbers, addresses, etc., making any in-game filters or moderation obsolete.
And in case everything you've read so far worries you, Baszucki has a very simple solution for you. Stop letting your kids play Roblox. It's as simple as that. He advises parents to follow their intuition when making decisions, such as whether to let their children play online. And given the current state of the game and this proposed future direction, that may actually be a sensible decision. However, if you've ever come in contact with a child, you'll know that simply forbidding them from doing something is not as easy as it may sound on paper.
What do you think about this new direction that Roblox is heading? Would you let your child play the game? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Bloomberg, TechStuff Podcast, PC Gamer
