These dangers exist to varying degrees in every system involving humans on the planet. This includes ones that are less visible to you than Roblox and come with more implicit trust, for example schools.
This is obviously easier to do with kids that aren't getting the support they need at home, but it's still not that hard to do with those that are thriving.
...or maybe that's the reason I'm hanging out on HN with the rest of you as an adult.
Well, times have changed and the creeps have gotten creepier and more organized. They have more channels, more ways to hide, more ways to collaborate, and more ways to do serious damage.
As for the 80s and 90s? I also survived doing some stupid and shady things on BBSes and the internet. I don’t want children to have learn the lessons I learned the same way. I also know people who didn’t come out okay. Who didn’t have a parent or friend check in on them, and got in deep in bad stuff and ended up in prison or dead. Don’t try to cook up drugs in your kitchen using a random recipe on the internet, kids.
Because predators are older and smarter than your average naïve kid. A few years ago I'm making breakfast for my wife (I work from home) and the doorbell rings - it's two town cops asking if I'm the parent of <my kid's name>. Turns out, some local pedophile had sent some dick pics to my 12 year old kid several months prior on Snapchat and they wanted to interview her. This was the first we'd heard of what had happened. We'd long since removed her from social media (unrelated to this event). And this was after spending countless hours repeating ourselves to death about not talking to strangers online. And yes we checked her phone daily...But Snapchat being what it is (disappearing messages), makes it more difficult to audit. She even told this guy what neighborhood we lived in. Since this was his first offense, the guy got 6 months probation and a permanent restraining order against him. Nothing ever came of it, and she's a few years older (and hopefully wiser) ... and the social media restrictions are still on.
In hindsight I wouldn't give my kid a phone until they were > 15 years old and even then it would depend on their maturity level.
It’s either allowing dangers of internet or allowing some peer pressure because your kid is “loser who not only is not on snapgram but doesn’t even have a phone and they’re in a second grade already”
The way I hope to prevent that is to ensure that my daughter knows that, while I may disapprove of things like drinking, I'll always forgive her. I also make her clear on the line adults should not cross.
Besides that, I try to build her self esteem and street smarts as much as I can. In addition I have her question authority, myself included.
These roblox systems do not reflect reality at all as we used to know it. Kids used to draw something that their parents would hang on the fridge and they didn't make 350 bucks from it, nor did the entire world have access to my fridge to see their creations. If we played D&D it was with 4 kids in the same street or same neighborhood - our worlds were much smaller/finite. If some rando approached us - it was weird and we knew to say "no thanks" and move on - bit in the context of the internet - everyone is a rando.
At first, it was kind of cool to see kids create roblox groups, then use those groups to sell things and distribute the funds - but they became infiltrated and before long kids were addicted and they had to login and they had to create and they had to work.. and they stopped being kids... and old farts manipulated and took over these communities to profit off child labor.
But.. from a parents perspective. It just meant turning the roblox off. Pulling it cold turkey. You can block chat - then they hop on discord. And discord just makes things infinitely worse. Block discord and they're on twitter, instagram, pinterest, facebook, snapchat, tiktok.
THat desire for instant gratification and community at all costs then has them looking for other people in similar situations and that usually means self diagnosing things, searching for aesthetics or trying to define themselves in really weird ways with such fluidity that no one can keep up. Not even them.
So yeah, you can't teach this to kids.. Parents aren't equipped to handle it either.
Parents are absolutely not equipped for this.
The tricky thing is that for this to be effective, you need block all general-purpose browsers as well, which kinda sucks.
Obviously more subtle sarcasm is harder to pick up on, but even adults struggle with this, eg. Americans having a hard time with British "bone-dry wit".
Even as an adult how many of us get scammed. Even cops do!
We need antivirus software and firewalls for our brains. It’s coming.
I teach my kid to not run into the street. He does it anyway if he gets distracted. He isn't 'trying' to get hit a by a car.
When he's older he'll be able to control himself. For now I don't let him near the street on his own.
You can certainly do that, but it wouldn’t be good enough. It’s like spear phishing, it doesn’t matter that 90% of people recognize the attempt and report it, the 10% that doesn’t is absolutely unacceptable (at least when you transplant it to Roblox).
Would you accept a 10% chance your kid is going to be groomed?
Roblox (and basically all social networks/games for that matter) are pretty much the wild west when it comes to moderation and protection of minors.