Roblox promises creativity for kids, but delivers predators, hate speech, and unsafe content.
My kids call me a bad dad. They say I’m mean. And I’m ok with that. Why am I the big meanie of the house? I kicked my kids off Roblox. Gone. Banned from the house and their phones forever.
The primary color avatars, the imagination developing immersive user generated worlds, the endless games, the ability to play with friends, it all seems so promising. So innocent and fun. I like that my kids are engaged in a creative digital world, building and exploring.
But as I started paying closer attention. The more I learned, the more concerned I became. It isn’t a handful of bad actors; it’s a systemic problem that, in my opinion, makes the platform fundamentally unsafe for children.
This isn’t about demonizing online gaming. I LOVE online gaming…with my friends and people I know. This is about making a choice for my family’s safety. After careful consideration, I put my foot down.
Here are the five reasons why I am kicking my kids off Roblox for good.
1. It’s a Digital Hunting Ground for Predators
The Unmonitored Chat Makes Kids Easy Targets
Roblox is an open platform, which allows for communication between strangers. Anyone can chat with my kid at any time and tell them anything. When playing these innocent games kids are exposed to sexual grooming, Manosphere bullshit, Alt-right extremist lies and sexual advances. Anything goes.
A BBC investigation and reports from organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) have confirmed that predators use online gaming environments, including Roblox, to groom children. They build trust by interacting in games, offering in-game currency like Robux, or promising special items. Their ultimate goal is to move the conversation to an external, unmonitored platform like Discord or Snapchat, where they can continue their predatory behavior without any oversight.
Multiple lawsuits, including one out of North Carolina, claim an adult predator used Robux (the platform’s currency) to groom a 10‑year‑old into sending explicit photos, then moved their conversation off the platform to evade detection.
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A California family alleges a similar scenario: their 10‑year‑old child was groomed, abducted, and trafficked after initial contact on Roblox, showing how quickly danger can escalate.
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Iowa’s lawsuit, filed on behalf of a 13‑year‑old girl, accuses Roblox of enabling kidnapping and rape by allowing predators to contact children with minimal checks.
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2. “Inappropriate” isn’t an overstatement. User generated games are disturbing. Games like “Public Restroom” and “Public Shower have no place on a gaming platform.
It’s hard to grasp the true nature of how unchecked the content is it until you see examples. It’s horrifying to discover the existence of games with titles like “Public Restroom” and “Public Shower.”
These aren’t just simulation games where you wait in line for a bathroom stall. Investigations have found that these “experiences” often feature avatars in sexually suggestive poses, with disturbing in-game actions and interactions.
According to a report from The Guardian, a digital-behavior research firm found that test accounts for children as young as 10 were able to access these “highly suggestive environments,” where they could witness other avatars engaged in inappropriate and sexually-themed behavior. These games are a clear example of how the platform’s moderation and filtering systems fail to protect children from content that is overtly sexual and predatory in nature. It’s a dark underbelly that no parent should have to worry about their child stumbling upon.
3. Hate Speech and Extremist Content Slip Through the Cracks.
It’s not just sexual content that’s a problem. The user-generated nature of Roblox also means it’s a hotbed for hate speech. A CBS News investigation revealed that players in popular games can bypass moderation by using in-game tools, like a virtual spray paint can, to scrawl hate messages, racial slurs, and swastikas on walls and objects. Roblox’s filters work on chat (barely), but they often don’t catch these more creative forms of expression. As a result, children are exposed to hateful ideologies and discriminatory content, often without any context or understanding of its meaning. It’s a toxic environment that has no place in a child’s world.
Roblox has hosted games that glorify hate and extremist ideologies, everything from neo-Nazi roleplay to simulations of real-life shootings.
Moderation is a constant game of catch-up. Fast Company likened it to “whack-a-mole,” arguing Roblox’s content filtration is reactive and easily bypassed.
4. The Inadequacy of the Chat Filters
I initially believed Roblox’s chat filters were a decent line of defense. They’re not. Savvy kids and malicious adults can easily bypass them. They use misspellings, symbols, and slang to communicate things that would normally be blocked. The so-called “unmonitored chat” isn’t a glitch, it’s a feature that bad actors exploit. It allows for a level of communication that is ripe for bullying, exposure to profanity, and, most disturbingly, grooming. Parent complaints detail how their kids were invited to private chats, and it’s simply a risk I’m no longer willing to take.
One lawsuit describes Roblox as a “hunting ground for child‑sex predators,” thanks to designing systems that let adults pose as children and bypass safety nets
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A staggering legal challenge from Louisiana’s Attorney General claims the platform fosters an environment where predators can “thrive, unite, hunt and victimize kids,” due to a lack of effective age verification and minimal proactive moderation.
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5. Roblox’s Safety Measures: They Don’t Have it under Control.
Roblox has a safety team and parental controls, but these efforts, in my opinion, are not enough. The lawsuits against the company and the widespread reports from parents and safety organizations are a testament to this failure. The platform’s immense scale and its reliance on user-generated content make it a constant uphill battle. Even when parents use the controls to restrict access, inappropriate content can still slip through. Recently, some countries, like Kuwait, have even temporarily banned the game, citing concerns about its lack of effective child safety measures.
Roblox touts its Sentinel AI, an open-source tool that monitors billions of messages daily, flags harmful behavior, and has already made over 1,200 reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.apnews.com+1
Still, reported cases of child exploitation tied to Roblox have surged, from just 675 in 2019 to over 24,000 in 2024. Experts say the platform still puts too much of the safety burden on kids and parents.
Conclusion: Enough Isn’t Enough
For me, the decision is made. Roblox, with its unmonitored chat, predatory element, and inappropriate content, poses a clear and present danger to my children.
You can’t call it just “fun”; Roblox has become a petri dish for all manner of digital threats, grooming, predation, extremist chatter, and sexualized content. With lawsuits mounting (over 400 in one case alone) The Sun, it’s clear that Roblox’s public face of creativity hides a dangerous reality.
The platform’s promise of a safe, creative community simply doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. My kids will find other ways to play and connect with their friends, ways that don’t come with a constant, nagging fear that they might be exposed to something truly harmful.
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