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Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

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Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#181

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

ghusto wrote: post #130
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education will not be enough. They actually teach about this stuff in school and give plenty of warnings believe it or not. I also gave lectures and installed FamilyLink and put restrictions on my router to prevent my child from accessing devices in a way I didn't approve of or when I couldn't adequately supervise it. The sneaky little shit still found ways to circumvent all this both here at home and at school. My c…

> The fact that this still happened despite my many roadblocks and safe-guards I put in place really shocked me to the core. Not to mention the whole "am I terrible parent" question which naturally arises out of all this I don't want to kick you when you're down, but you tried a technical solution on a human problem.

I don't think that's necessarily accurate. Can you elaborate on what a "human" solution would be in your mind? For us, it was a combination of technical, educational, and traditional parenting as well as some therapy for other behavioral issues exhibited in school. We had after-school classes and sports. We played board games as a family. From our perspective, we were doing things correctly in both the technical and human aspect of it to make sure it never got to that point, yet it still happened.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#182

Post by darth_avocado »

jaredklewis wrote: post #145
syntaxing wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, I grew up in the suburbs in the 90s. We were fine. I would hang out with the neighborhood kids unsupervised all day long even when I was single digits old. The issue is with American culture and how it shifted into a low trust society.

I think the parent is saying what you had is now not possible, because the neighbors don’t have kids. I’m in the burbs. Nearest kid is 4 door downs. Nearest kid the same age as my kid is two blocks over. Most people are 60+. Anecdata but I think this is what the parent comment is asserting anyway.

Yeah, homeownership within young families is ridiculously out of reach, which makes “young suburbs” a difficult thing to maintain. Anecdotally, we are a young family and there’s very few other ones in the neighborhood that are in the similar boat as us.

As compared to what I heard from the older neighbors, when they had kids, all the others around also had kids. So many in fact that all the neighbors had doors in their backyards that opened into all the other neighbors yards, so the kids would just run around without having to go into the streets.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#183

Post by thombles »

ghusto wrote: post #130
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education will not be enough. They actually teach about this stuff in school and give plenty of warnings believe it or not. I also gave lectures and installed FamilyLink and put restrictions on my router to prevent my child from accessing devices in a way I didn't approve of or when I couldn't adequately supervise it. The sneaky little shit still found ways to circumvent all this both here at home and at school. My c…

> The fact that this still happened despite my many roadblocks and safe-guards I put in place really shocked me to the core. Not to mention the whole "am I terrible parent" question which naturally arises out of all this I don't want to kick you when you're down, but you tried a technical solution on a human problem.

Given what this person has gone through, if you want to be critical then I think you owe us a more detailed explanation what exactly would have worked better. Armchair parenting is very easy.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#184

Post by in_cahoots »

Nextgrid wrote: post #134
massysett wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I let my kid play Roblox for a couple of weeks and I was absolutely horrified by all the inducements to seek Robux. So I removed it from her iPad, which is locked down. She gets along just fine without Roblox.

The problem is that just like boycotts/individual action doesn't work (besides a handful of lucky exceptions), this won't work either if all your kids' peers are on it. Being the "odd one out" brings its own share of problems, especially in a volatile environment where any pretext for bullying is a good one. This is why we need regulation. Both for child-focused platforms, but also for adults (regarding social media)…

I agree mostly. But I would push back on the idea that you need to let your child do whatever (play on Roblox, get fancy clothes or toys, etc) because of bullying. You're trading one set of potential problems for another set of known problems, and letting your own fears dictate how you raise your kids. How do you expect your kids to stand up to peer pressure as teenagers if you give into their peers when they are younger?

I get it. We all look back at the pain from our childhoods and try to shield our kids from that pain. But unless you want your kid to be average in every way there's going to be a chance of bullying. Focus on building a strong relationship with them so that you can guide them through it if it happens.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#185

Post by autoexec »

hedora wrote: post #164
Spivak wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is Minecraft the standalone game that you play either by yourself or on a private server with friends you know IRL. That's totally fine. Then there is the wider Minecraft community based on a constellation of public and semi-public servers. This is a lot more like Roblox.

Microsoft forces login these days for single player play, and jams ads, social networking crap. As a parent, I don’t have time for this bullshit, and assume they have malicious intentions. Also, at least once, there was some warning about a profanity filter that my kid dismissed without reading. It’s tied to my MS account, and only a matter of time before that is tied to github and linkedin. So the kid says “doodie h…

Exactly, everything wrong with Minecraft started with Microsoft. They took a fun, harmless, and free game so that they could profit from it and they've been working at making it increasingly harmful ever since.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#186

Post by dwattttt »

hedora wrote: post #164
Spivak wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is Minecraft the standalone game that you play either by yourself or on a private server with friends you know IRL. That's totally fine. Then there is the wider Minecraft community based on a constellation of public and semi-public servers. This is a lot more like Roblox.

Microsoft forces login these days for single player play, and jams ads, social networking crap. As a parent, I don’t have time for this bullshit, and assume they have malicious intentions. Also, at least once, there was some warning about a profanity filter that my kid dismissed without reading. It’s tied to my MS account, and only a matter of time before that is tied to github and linkedin. So the kid says “doodie h…

Have you considered not tying your encryption keys to your child's online activities? I can understand the thrill of danger, but I'm not that much of a gambler myself.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#187

Post by oezi »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #170
Spivak wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is Minecraft the standalone game that you play either by yourself or on a private server with friends you know IRL. That's totally fine. Then there is the wider Minecraft community based on a constellation of public and semi-public servers. This is a lot more like Roblox.

The Minecraft you know and love is a fantastic game, especially for kids. Top 10 all time, IMO, in terms of creativity and education and development. And you can easily set up a personal friends and family server/realm, and there are tons of free mods and maps. The problem is that malicious actors can build Roblox in anything. It's not hard to get kids hooked and begging their parents for lucrative in-game gambling c…

I am probably not the right generation but all attempts to engage with Minecraft with my children have always ended badly. It seems very tedious and clunky. The learning curve seems steeper than playing factorio casually.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#188

Post by worldsavior »

uniq7 wrote: post #47
worldsavior wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully? Why don't you just forbid him to play Fortnite? Sounds like your son doesn't listen to you, and that's a problem.

Has an authority ever forbid you to do something and you still did it? If so, was it a problem that you didn't listen? I'm not a parent, but fortnite is not like smoking or drugs, common. If you don't let kids grow over this kind of bad content, they will never become good discriminators.

If they grow on it they will normalize this bad content. If someone didn't grow on Fortnite and then hear somebody wastes 6h a day on Fortnite, they will think "this guy is nuts".

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#189

Post by autoexec »

foota wrote: post #158

It's interesting to me to think about a possible system where people in say roblox can only chat with each other by exchanging physical keys somehow. This way, they would be able to chat with their peers from school etc., without the danger or need for as much supervision. I don't necessarily think this is technologically feasible or something that would be accepted, but I think it's an interesting idea.

Nintendo kind of tried that with "friend codes" but they were just annoying and spread online anyway, which is kind of fair since today it's not uncommon for people to be friends with people in distant places and the internet should allow us to be able to connect and play with each other no matter where we are.

The original solution to just playing with local friends was LAN parties, but private servers were great too where they were actually private/hosted entirely by the players and not just part of some corporation's online platform.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#190

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #169

> Since 2018, at least two dozen people in the United States have been arrested and accused of abducting or abusing victims they met on Roblox, according to a 2024 investigation by Bloomberg. So about three per year, out of 112 million users? That's a far better track record than the Boy Scouts of America or the Roman Catholic Church. Roblox has a strange demographic problem. Their average user age is around 14. They…

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