Online child safety campaigners, including Jonathan Haidt, the bestselling author of The Anxious Generation, have called on the Trump administration to investigate Roblox, the gaming and chat platform used by 150 million people daily, many of them under 13. The groups have filed a dossier with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claiming that Roblox's design and business model conflict with children's developmental needs.
The complaint, lodged by Haidt's Anxious Generation Movement, Fairplay and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, criticises what it calls the platform's “engagement-maximising design features”. It alleges that Roblox's voice and text chat functions repeatedly expose children to sexual content and harmful adults, resulting in sexual exploitation and abuse. It also argues that Robux, the in-game currency, monetises children's “lack of impulse control”.
Roblox allows users, some as young as five, to play millions of user-generated games and chat with others depending on age brackets. For example, nine-year-olds can chat with 15-year-olds, and 13-year-olds with 17-year-olds. While popular games like Brookhaven offer virtual life experiences, the platform has hosted controversial games featuring sexually explicit content, violence and horror. The campaigners accuse Roblox of “committing unfair trade practices and acts at the expense of children's safety and wellbeing”.
The FTC chair, Andrew Ferguson, has been outspoken on child safety online, and the request comes amid growing political and legal backlash against tech platforms. Casey Mock, senior policy director of the Anxious Generation Movement, noted that an estimated 40% of Roblox's daily users are under 13, giving the company “obligations to families that go well beyond what its terms of service may say”. Fairplay's policy counsel, Haley Hinkle, said the filing showed Roblox's safety claims were “simply not true”, and urged the FTC to act as over 30 million under-13s use the platform daily.
Roblox, based in San Mateo, California, saw revenue jump 36% to $4.9bn last year, driven by sales of Robux. A spokesperson for the company strongly disputed the campaigners' claims, stating that the platform is “designed to provide a positive, heal...” The company has recently introduced facial age estimation and a system called Sentinel for “real-time child endangerment detection”.
