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Guardian reporter Sarah Martin spent a week undercover on Roblox, posing as an eight-year-old girl while parental controls were turned on. This SurvivorsRights.com summary has been modified to remove unnecessarily graphic descriptions of abuse and to protect survivors while maintaining the integrity of the journalist’s investigation.
Roblox is one of the most used gaming platforms in the world, with more than 100 million users signing in daily. Nearly half are children under age 13. Martin notes that many spend well over two hours per day on the platform, drawn into its millions of player-created experiences.
To understand what millions of children encounter online, Martin creates a child avatar. Almost immediately, she finds that her character model features unrealistic and overly mature physical proportions. This raises early concerns about how youth are visually represented.
Her first stop is Dress to Impress, a clothing and fashion popularity contest with more than 6 billion visits. The game is considered a favorite among young girls. Players dress avatars to a theme and then rate each other on a five-star scale. Martin sees chat messages that can become insulting, and there are features that let players pay to virtually harass others. Experts call this type of monetization potentially harmful for children and say it can normalize bullying.
Martin discovers hidden and frightening rooms and storylines in areas marketed to kids. Some involve imagery that suggests danger or captivity. She finds these elements poorly aligned with the game’s wholesome fashion theme.
Experts warn that the Roblox economy pressures children to spend real money to gain in-game advantages. “Roblox games are actually monetizing that kind of desire to troll and mess with and negatively impact other players,” says Marcus Carter, a professor in human-computer interaction at the University of Sydney. He adds that the platform profits from games built by children, a practice he calls “playbor.”
Roblox’s massive success has attracted corporations and venture-capital investors. But Martin finds that some of the most popular games, including Dress to Impress, appear to be developed and moderated by teenagers. This creates uncertainty about oversight when serious misconduct allegations arise among game staff or moderators.
Roblox says it uses AI and safety filters to block harmful content and prevent dangerous interactions. The company states that it is “committed to leading in safety through rigorous policies that go above and beyond what other platforms do.”
However, multiple lawsuits filed in the United States allege that predators have used Roblox to target minors. One lawsuit called the platform “the perfect place for pedophiles.” Another case accuses Roblox and Discord of “systemic failures to protect society’s most vulnerable from unthinkable harm.”
Martin’s own experience supports those concerns. In one virtual hangout, another avatar performs a sexually explicit act on her avatar despite her attempts to get him to stop. She is repeatedly harassed with degrading language in other games targeting young users. She also accesses casinos, horror simulations, and rooms where adults can interact with children in real time, all while family controls remain enabled.
Martin concludes that Roblox’s structure allows harmful encounters to happen quickly, even unintentionally. She observes that simply labeling content as “safe for children” does not necessarily make it safe.
Carter, who studies gaming culture and child protection, tells Martin that he cannot confidently advise parents that Roblox is appropriate for minors. “My son is four and I do not intend to ever let him play Roblox,” he says.
Martin leaves the platform after just one week with an unsettling conclusion: many children may be navigating dangers far beyond what their families realize.
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Preventing Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM)
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