Online child safety campaigners call for US inquiry into Roblox

Key points

• Online child safety campaigners including Jonathan Haidt, the bestselling writer on the mental health impacts of social media, have called on the Trump administration to investigate Roblox, the booming gaming and chat platform used by 150 million people daily, including a large number of under-13s.
• Haidt’s Anxious Generation Movement, Fairplay and the rightwing anti-pornography Center on Sexual Exploitation are among groups claiming Roblox’s design and business model conflict with children’s developmental needs.
• They have filed a dossier to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that criticises the platform’s “engagement-maximising design features”, alleges its voice and text chat features “repeatedly expose children to sexual content and harmful adults, resulting in sexual exploitation and abuse” and says its in-game purchasing currency, Robux, monetises children’s “lack of impulse control”.
• Roblox’s users include millions of young children from the age of five upward who, adopting the guise of block-like avatars, play a choice of 7...