With everything there are always pluses and minues.
Kids should always be suprevised when online no matter what they are doing.
Sadly as each year goes by the risks become higher. it will be interesing to see what will happen with this social media ban for those under 16 years.

I think it is best to stay away from it. The issue is that it is a live role playing tyoe game. They have recently removed chat features from it I believe, but you still don’t know who is on there and it is not monitored well enough. Other countries have banned it, and in all honesty it is just one of those addictive things that kids want to spend all their time on. They are better off with active play. Or if they are playing games, Minecraft at least teaches some skills. From what I have seen on Roblox it seems like a lot of mind rot.

“My son stopped playing Roblox because he realized most games just want your money. He said it’s not about fun anymore, just buying stuff to keep playing. I guess he’s grown out of it.”

My 5yr old son asked to play once all his friends in kindy started playing. I’m like you were I had read so many mixed reviews and was very uneasy about it.
However I believe trust starts from a young age and they need to learn at some point what they can and can’t do.
As parents we allowed him to play on the conditions that I altered ALL the parental control settings (including removing the chat boxes) no friends only his cousin, and he sits next to us while playing. He had no qualms with it all, just generally happy he was allowed.
In saying that, there’s no iPad during the week, only limited time on the weekend.

My children play and it has been great for their motor skills for us personally. But we definitely monitor the games they choose to play and we have a strict rule that they do not chat or engage in conversations with people online that arent their friends. My kids know what they can and cant play in the app and it has worked for us

Such a great question! My kids are teens now and we went through all this aswell. At first we said a big NO to any games that are online with other players and chats.
Then the whole class was playing together in the afternoons and it became a social isolation issue so we allowed some play. We mostly watched our kids play and then became overly comfortable and weren’t monitoring it as much, I saw the chat one day and realised my daughter had been speaking with someone on there, thankfully she remembered all our rules about not telling anyone names or ages etc but she definitely gave big clues as to the local area we live. This really shook me up and I chastised myself for being a bad parent. I think online games are something each family has to monitor very very closely and I recommend a kids must play in the family living areas not in private rooms etc. good luck with it

My boys used to play reblox but after reading some negative stuff in the news, i decided otherwise as am not very technical savvy so monitoring and figuring out of something was wrong would be hard for me so not worth the risk. I also played a few times myself and found it weird!

I think Roblox is a good introduction to online games for kids. It’s fairly moderated and they are quick to ban inappropriate game play and behaviour. I would just continue to monitor and frequently check in with how their experience is going. The scamming reminds me of my old school days on Habbo Hotel (far too young to have been on there!) and I would have benefited from a parent telling me not to trust other gamers with inventory

My kids loved playing Roblox when younger and I do think it really can inspire them to be creative. However at times they would get very upset when they were scammed, which was a though lesson to learn (but doesn’t have to be a bad lesson to learn as it creates awareness). I do think that scammers especially prey on the younger innocent kids.
My youngest (she has Down syndrome) watches video’s of kids playing Roblox on YouTube kids and then thinks she is playing it herself 😉