A Mainstream Contributor To Sexual Exploitation
Among the avatars, blocks, and buildings, kids are exposed to predators and inappropriate content.
Updated 10/9/24: A new report describes Roblox as “a pedophile hellscape for kids.” Researchers easily identified 38 Roblox groups – one with as many as 103,000 members – openly trading child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and soliciting sexual acts from minors. User names like “@igruum_minors” [I groom minors], and “@RavpeTinyK1dsJE” [rape tiny kids] are common, with 900+ variations alone of abuser Jeffrey Epstein and multiple variations using Earl Brian Bradley, who was indicted on 471 charges of molesting, raping, and exploiting 103 children. Researchers also found sexual abuse-themed games, many of which they were able to access when registered as a child, including ones centered on convicted sex offenders like “Escape to Epstein Island” and “Run From Diddy Simulator.”
If you have a child, they or their friends are likely playing Roblox. Yet while the wildly popular platform allows kids to actualize and enact their dreams on screen, rampant dangers have trapped countless kids into real life nightmares.
Like the 11-year-old New Jersey girl who was kidnapped by a predator who played video games with her on Roblox, a platform her parents understandably assumed was safe.
Or the 13-year-old Utah boy who also fell victim to an abuser on Roblox who kidnapped and sexually assaulted him before the authorities intervened and thankfully brought him home.
Tragically, these are not isolated incidents. Since Roblox’s inception, countless children have been sexually abused and exploited by predators they met on Roblox.
Children are also exposed to highly sexualized content and themes – children’s avatars have been raped, “condo” games revolve around sex (interactive pornography), and kids can enter virtual “strip clubs.” These are prime areas for grooming that also normalize this type of activity to children. While these incidences happen in the virtual world, the negative effects on kids are devastatingly real.
How is it possible that a $2.8 billion platform with children ages 12 and under comprising the largest demographic (and therefore a substantial percentage of revenue) has not embraced common sense child protection measures? Roblox should be leading the industry in the highest safety standards – but instead, it’s leaving young users at grave risk on a platform many parents and kids themselves reasonably believe will be a safe space.
Yet instead of making any substantive changes after being placed on the 2023 Dirty Dozen List, Roblox launched a new product that provides predators with a new way to connect with kids and doubled down on efforts to entice more adults onto the platform by expanding into online dating (including for 17-year-old-kids who are likely still in high-school!).
Roblox must make the platform safe by default and design, rather than continuously pushing more of the burden onto parents – and young children themselves – to try to monitor a platform with more than 50 million games.
Until basic child protection standards are met, Roblox remains too high risk for kids.
Review the proof we’ve collected, read our recommendations for improvement, and see our notification letter to Roblox for more details.
Child sexual abuse and grooming have long been a threat on Roblox. A simple Google search easily yields results about grooming and exploitation occurring on the platform. The following are just a few news stories about predatory adults accessing children through Roblox:
S.U.’s childhood was supposed to be filled with innocent fun, but instead, it was marred by the heinous actions of predators lurking on the Roblox platform. Despite her mother’s watchful eye, 11-year-old S.U. was targeted by not one, but two adult men who manipulated, exploited, and abused her through the game. These predators used Roblox as a hunting ground for vulnerable children, and the company did nothing to stop them.
The two predators targeting S.U. may have been the most overt abusers, but S.U. was also bombarded with sexual advances from other adult players. Roblox’s supposed monitoring tools for inappropriate, dangerous behavior seem to only apply to swearing and fighting, not the rampant sexual predation happening on your watch. And when S.U. tried to reach out for help, she found none.
The toll of this abuse on S.U. is immeasurable. It drove her to attempt suicide twice. She has been stripped of her childhood and her mental health continues to suffer. Her mother struggles every day to get her daughter the help she needs, all while fighting for justice against the company that failed to protect her daughter.
S.U.’s story is a heartbreaking reminder that we cannot let companies like Roblox prioritize profits over the safety of our children. We must demand accountability and change to ensure that no child suffers like S.U. did.
At the tender age of 13, a Utah boy was lured into a trap on Roblox, an app that his parents trusted to be safe for their child. But behind the facade of child-friendly graphics and colorful characters, a predator was lurking, preying on vulnerable children like him. With cunning tactics and false promises, the abuser persuaded him to migrate to other apps, including Discord and Twitter, where the grooming continued to take place in the shadows.
Then came the unthinkable. One day, the boy was suddenly snatched away and taken across state lines before the authorities finally intervened. The trauma that he and his family have been forced to endure is nothing short of a living nightmare. Their once happy home has been shattered into a million pieces, and the boy’s life will never be the same again.
This tragedy could have been avoided if Roblox had taken a stronger stance against the presence of adult predators on its platform. While the company may tout its commitment to safety, these bold statements have proven hollow in the face of frequent incidents of abuse. It’s past time for Roblox to step up and protect the innocent children who use its platform before another tragedy like this one occurs.
Roblox’s policies prohibit sexualized themes and activities. However, there are hundreds of games with sexually explicit themes, including strip clubs, dance clubs, “Condo Experiences,” and more. Child accounts by default have access to all of these experiences. (This article in Rolling Stone addresses the “virtual strip clubs” on Roblox.)
Many youth have reported innocently visiting “condo experiences” only to be encouraged to visit someone’s “home,” go into the “bedroom,” and then engage in virtual sexual acts. Other children innocently wander around the games and stumble on this activity. NCOSE researchers created multiple accounts on Roblox and were easily exposed to age-inappropriate content, as shown in the screenshots below.
10-year-old boy account:
11-year-old girl account:
Within 45 minutes, our research encountered the following scenarios:
Children of any age are allowed to create accounts; no email and no parental permission is required. By default, Roblox sets young child accounts to:
Default settings for 11-year-old account created February, 2024:
It is unacceptable that even with all of the documented harms, Roblox still does not automatically default settings for children to the safest measures.
The “parental controls” Roblox does offer are inadequate. They don’t offer protection against some of the most basic risks (allowing parents to blacklist or whitelist specific games or stopping adult strangers from friending kids) and where they do offer some solutions, they are not comprehensive. Instead, Roblox’s parental controls create a false sense of security for parents who trust it. For example, many parents believe they are disabling chatting, but are not told that it only stops some forms of chatting and that adults can still communicate with kids through certain games. Likewise, parents are not told that anyone can “friend” their child when they set chatting to be only with friends.
Roblox users and their parents deserve transparency and accountability. We need to know the truth to keep kids safe.
Roblox must provide effective parental controls. The following are some of the flaws with Roblox’s current tools:
It is not enough to rely on parents to monitor their children’s activity on the platform when Roblox has a duty to implement strong and effective measures to prevent these heinous crimes.
Urgent Update on Roblox and Online Safety from Safe on Social (October 2023)
Safe on Social – based in Australia, but working globally – issued an urgent safety warning about children as young as 3–6 increasingly interacting with strangers on Roblox. They also noted cases of children being asked to role-play and offers of free in-game currency in exchange for inappropriate interactions.
Safe on Social also reports that:
Some of the content has become a sex fetish – if you search “Roblox Sex” online, you will get millions of links to adult entertainment websites where Roblox videos have been uploaded. I am very concerned that some of these “Roblox Sex” videos may be children’s avatars engaged in these acts – there is no way to tell. Children have reported what is nothing short of in-game sexual assault to me on more than one occasion, which has been reported to the police. As far as we know, only one major Adult Entertainment company has made the word Roblox and all of the ways it may be written (R.O.B.L.O.X for example to circumvent security) completely unsearchable on their sites.
NCOSE researchers are hearing increasing reports of Roblox currency “Robux” being used to entice children into performing sexual acts both on and off Roblox. While this is not something NCOSE has had the capacity to investigate in-depth (nor has it yet been widely examined among child safety experts), we will be doing so more closely throughout 2024 and will be encouraging law enforcement and cyber security specialists to be doing the same.
Stanford Internet Observatory report on Addressing Child Exploitation on Federated Social Media posted this screenshot showing the type of currency children are posting for their own self-generated CSAM (page 8).
From an article Is Roblox safe? Safety experts don’t think so:
Kirra Pendergast, the founder of the Safe on Social group that made the submission, said Roblox is being used as a first point of contact for predators.
She said “hundreds and hundreds” of children tell her every week via online safety programs at Australian schools that they’re being approached by strangers on Roblox.
The submission says children are often asked to take part in roleplaying games or be the stranger’s boyfriend or girlfriend. Moving the conversation to applications such as TikTok or Snapchat, where private messaging is available, has also been raised.
Pendergast said that some users were offering children money to perform sexual acts. This was done through the in-game ‘Robux’ currency.
This could include being paid Robux to play a role-playing game, such as being ‘adopted’ or lying down on top of another avatar.
She said young children are subject to nude or semi-nude avatars while playing role-playing games in Roblox. They could also be exposed to sexual acts or simulated sex between avatars.
Roblox has no age restrictions or age verification; new accounts are defaulted to be able to access every ‘experience’
Kids 16 and under make up 60% of Roblox demographic (22% are under age 9)
Role-playing games on Roblox are growing in popularity – and predators are using them to target kids
Among Us | Fortnite | Minecraft
These are all extremely popular games with children that have also come under fire for sexual predators accessing children and kids being exposed to harmful content. Learn more about these platforms and how to turn on available parental controls at Protect Young Eyes.
Who’s Responsible for Protecting Kids Online…and How? This panel of digital safety experts will elevate some of the current and emerging digital dangers facing youth.
CyberFareedah gives parents some safety advice for Roblox content in this quick, informative video.