HARTFORD (WTIC News) -- Proclaiming that innocent children have become targets on the gaming and chat platform Roblox, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong says he’s investigating.
“We’re doing it because Roblox has become a predator’s playground,” Tong said at a Tuesday press conference at his Hartford offices. “A place where adults, where people who want to do harm for children go looking for our kids to take advantage of them, to harm them, to make them do things to themselves, to hurt themselves.”
Roblox is extremely popular, with hundreds of millions of users worldwide, especially with younger users, with 40% under age 13. Tong says kids as young as five years old are playing on Roblox, and that the company is doing a poor job keeping predators off the site:
“And they say on their website that Roblox is safe for kids as low as five years old. That is not true. That is a lie.”
State representatives from both parties are backing Tong’s investigation, and they’re willing to look at new regulations to protect children online-- on top of those recently passed by the legislature.
They say adults are accessing children through the Roblox chat function, grooming them for sexual abuse or suggesting self-harm, and that this access can occur even after parents take precautions.
“It only takes a friend of a friend adding an anonymous person to a group chat you thought was safe, and suddenly, that chat room on Roblox includes a predator,” said state Rep. Jaime Foster (D-Ellington).
“Parents need our help. They deserve to know when their children log on to a ‘so-called’ safe and family-friendly platform, every reasonable step is being taken to protect them from predators, exploitation, and harmful content,” said state Rep. Dave Rutigliano (D-Trumbull).
Tong also says some of the “gaming experiences” offered by Roblox are distasteful, inappropriate, or both. He says one game offers players a chance to be cast as a school shooter targeting Sandy Hook.
Roblox claims it is focused on children's safety and that game experiences are geared for specific age groups, but Tong says even the company’s efforts to simply identify users by their correct age have failed.
“Their ‘age gating,” said Tong, “to not allow kids who shouldn’t be on the platform and to not allow adults who shouldn’t be on the platform preying on our kids… those protections are a joke.”
The attorney general’s office is seeking details Roblox on the age of users in Connecticut, income generated from those users and hours spent on the platform, plus other records.
