To the surprise of nobody who knows the internet, a popular free-to-play online platform is being found to be a haven for predators. The internet has never been safe for kids to wander innocently. Giving your children access to open platforms where adults can also interact, that is optimised for profit and engagement is, basically, letting Jannie go alone to the dive bar you always thought was nice.
Do your u16s play Roblox?
Yes they do, unmonitored
No, we’re a minecraft family
They don’t even have a phone, how will they play?
Yes, but I have enabled all of the parental controls.
Yes, just with their friends.
No, I know how dangerous the platform is
Yes, and now I’m freaked out… is Fortnite just as bad?
Part of me cannot wait for the day that AI has ruined the internet completely and we all just go “let’s live in the meatspace for a bit”. Given the size of this company i hope these suits result in 10s of billions of damages. This whole move fast and break things mentality is leaving us with little more than a whole lot of broken things.
This is such a good follow-up to your story, @SharpSchutters :
The article emphasises practical steps parents can take, from actively participating in your child’s online life to knowing how to use safety tools and even understanding legal recourse.
Scares the life out of me @SharpSchutters I’m nowhere near active enough in monitoring my kids Roblox accounts. We talk a lot about anything that makes them feel ‘uncomfortable’ but by then it’s often too late (they’ve seen something, something has been said to them etc.) I appreciate that I can’t protect them from everything but I’m definitely going to do as you suggest and play it with them/check the messages etc.
What in your opinion are the benefits of these games/platforms, if any?
Outside of allowing them to familiarise themselves with how the internet works - which is kind of pointless because UX design is quite intuitive across the board - no real benefits, tbh. It’s telling that I have never denied my kids access to technology, but I do not allow them to play Roblox. Minecraft inspires the same creativity while having better guardrails, Fortnite has added better parental controls over time… I’ve always been skeptical of online games and communities for children under 16. There’s far more value in interacting with people and the world in real life in the early development years. Kids don’t realise that these digital playgrounds aren’t real life and the platform developers just see a payday.
This issue has gotten 40x scarier for me personally in the aftermath of you-know-what and getting some perspective on these groups, how they operate and what they do. Named networks of anonymous actors, confusing-to-us terminology and symbolism - i am genuinely terrified for the terminally online generation.
& half the problem is you look at posts like this and you think “This cannot be serious right? No sane person takes this seriously.”
It’s a different world out there and parents are letting their kids run wild in it. The scariest thing about a show like Adolescence is it showed a version of what that radicalisation pipeline is like but seems like the watching, outraged public took the wrong lessons from it.
