"I accidentally let my eight-year-old daughter interact with strangers online."

While both my eight-year-old and six-year-old have access to online games, luckily it was only the eight-year-old who had the frightening experience.

My six-year-old had lost his iPad for crappy behaviour towards his mum who is at the end of her school holiday tether. As for the eight-year-old, I hope the interaction was brief,  because the game in question was swiftly removed from her device the second she said the words: “this guy wants me to come into his house”.

For me, it was terrifying. Some people might think I’m overreacting, but who really knows when it comes to strangers behind a computer screen? What she told me was that a character in the game kept inviting her character into his game-house. The game in question is called Roblox, which as far as I can ascertain is similar to or has the potential to be as big a hit as Minecraft, the immensely popular building and survival games that all the kids are into.

Our kids came across it from one of their favourite Minecraft YouTubers, Dan TDM (if you weren’t already aware, kids are obsessed with watching other people play games on YouTube. Like, playing games and filming it is actually a fulltime job for these people).

The games have similarities in that they both allow users to play online with other people, but hugely different in a most important and worrying way: Whilst the online capability can be turned off for Minecraft, allowing children to play it without the added worry of online stranger danger, it cannot be turned off in Roblox. This means that if your child has this game, strangers can “chat” to them.

Under normal circumstances we probably wouldn’t have allowed it, but given it’s the last week of school holidays and we’re all driving each other crazy, we were desperate for something to occupy their attention. We’re generally not lax about cyber safety, but I think we figured that if they were told not to talk to anyone it would be fine. Our son can’t read yet anyway so it wasn’t a huge deal with him. But there’s nothing like your daughter coming in and saying “this guy keeps asking me to come into his house” to make you realise that a game which allows strangers to interact with your child is a huge NOPE.

It was a big wake-up call, and one that has made me realise that it’s actually quite difficult to explain to young children why it’s dangerous to talk to strangers online. Of course I want to keep them safe, but I also don’t want them to start seeing every stranger as a potential predator, especially at their young ages.

My advice to other parents would be to heed the age recommendations on these games and even then, do your research and listen to your own intuition. Roblox isn’t recommended for children under ten, which we stupidly ignored, but even at ten it’s probably not wise to have kids playing with strangers online.

Even with close supervision, things can go wrong. After this mistake we’ll be sticking to games which allow the capability to play online to be turned off, and I recommend others do too.

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