Our library has this installed on the public computers in the children’s department and we’ve hosted both Roblox and Minecraft events. Now I’m trying to determine what I should pass along to the head of the children’s department and how to advise her on it.
The events are organized and monitored by an adult, but the individual sessions? Not so much.
You’ll want to provide the Bloomberg report as well. It has more details. It sounds like Roblox is an avenue for your library to constructively engage with patrons but may require additional risk assessment
One the issues is adults using Roblox to initiate contact and begin gaining the trust of their victims, then moving to other platforms like Telegraph and Discord. The risk to children in your library might depend on how many of those other platforms the kids can access.
Or perhaps there is some way to limit the individual sessions to solo-play?
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-roblox-pedophile-problem/
After a discussion about it, we’re going to leave the software installed. We have a strict policy of no filtering on our network and I’m in favor of that, but we will be advising the Children’s department of this danger so the librarians can watch for it. We do not have Telegraph or Discord on the public computers, so that’s slightly less danger, but we also realize we can’t do anything about apps kids may have on their phones.
As available and convenient for the children, could they be periodically quizzed as to whether or not they have been personally contacted and questioned or spoken to in certain ways. i.e., ways as defined by the Children’s department staff, and could that staff prepare pertinent info leaflets, say, for the childrens’ parents to review?
For some reason, my kiddos were never interested in Roblox and now they are a bit too old for it. It was minecraft that they played. Minecraft is such an imaginative and creative game. They played with each other, they played with friends, and they even took courses based in minecraft. They learned a lot from playing it, and I had control over who they could play with.
I’d recommend the original, Java version if you want to try it out.
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