Teach Your Kids Online Safety With Roblox
Our children will be using the Internet long before their frontal lobes are fully developed, which means they need a lot of practice to figure out what is real and what is not, what is fraudulent and what is legal. Roblox, as part of its commitment to online safety, launched a free “ digital courtesy ” training program that educators can use with their students; Included is a Digital Safety Scavenger Hunt game that kids and parents can play at home.
The game focuses on the difference between “reliable” and “unreliable” information. The game begins by giving players clues to determine what is reliable and what is unreliable by scrutinizing these types of messages:
- Links to unofficial sites
- Claims without source
- Requests personal information or account information
- Real (free) money or gifts
You can watch the game trailer here :
Throughout the game, players are confronted with various signs, questions, or messages that they must label as reliable or unreliable. For example, they might come across an ad that says “tinyurl.com/freerobux81” and decide if they’re advertising something real that they should click on or not. Another sign reads: “Your account is in danger. Go to tinyurl.com/savRblx to save this! “And they must decide if they should click the link to” save “their account.
I asked my 10-year-old to try it out, and after four or five questions, he realized that most, if not all, examples would fall into the “unreliable” category. Still, it was good practice and reinforcement to pause to consider the legality of this kind of communication, and it was a good opportunity for us to talk again about internet safety.
Okay, and this was a good opportunity for him to try and teach me how to navigate Roblox, which I’m a little less awful now.