Protecting kids from online predators
State police offering free online safety program
Pennsylvania State Police are rolling out a program to help parents know how to keep their kids safe from online predators.
Rocco Gagliardi, public information officer for state police Troop B, put together the presentation that focuses mostly on Roblox. Roblox is an extremely popular platform that hosts millions of user-created video games, which Roblox refers to as “experiences.”
Roblox is available on computers, mobile devices, and PlayStation and Xbox consoles.
During a media event Thursday at the Allegheny County Emergency Services Facility in Moon Township, Gagliardi said parents have been more frequently asking about Roblox at state police events about online safety.
“Ten minutes could not go by unless a parent brought up Roblox. ‘Hey, my kid wants to play Roblox … What do I do as a parent to set up parental controls?’ The questions just would not stop,” Gagliardi said.
According to Gagliardi, the cartoony aesthetic of Roblox games can give a false sense of security to parents, and he warns that there are often adults seeking to interact with younger users.
“They don’t understand on the back-end that these players can be 30, 40, 50 years old, or they can be in a group of teams of online predators that really target these children in some very unique ways,” Gagliardi said.
The program will explain to parents how Roblox functions, the parental controls that do exist and how those securities are not perfect in preventing potential predators from communicating with children.
Gagliardi said the first hurdle is explaining what it means to be “playing Roblox.”
“That terminology is kind of tough because, yes, they are playing Roblox. However, this is almost like a hub where you can pick millions of games. So imagine Roblox just as the gaming platform where people of any age can play any of these experiences, and/or people can create their own games and upload it to this Roblox server for people to play,” Gagliardi said.
Parents can implement restrictions on their kids’ accounts and limit their ability to text and voice chat with other players. However, this requires the parent setting up their own account and linking it to their child’s account to activate those parental controls.
Regardless of the controls, Roblox will censor personal information like phone numbers if they are typed into the chat. Gagliardi says this is why predators aim to move children out of Roblox and into a less restrictive platform. Those are typically Snapchat, TikTok or Discord.
“Those are your main three players in this space. They want them out of Roblox and into those. Why? There’s more chat features. There’s video calls,” Gagliardi said.
Gagliardi described some predators on Roblox as “role-play” predators.
Certain Roblox games are specifically made for “role-playing.” Gagliardi gave an example of one game where players act out a wedding ceremony and honeymoon.
“And then once they get them out of that app and into another one, they’re gonna transfer that role-play into more real-world actions, where they want them to seek out these fantasies of threats and violence and harm and chaos. That is the end goal for the role-play predator,” Gagliardi said.
According to Gagliardi, kids will be convinced to self-harm, or even send a sexual image, and predators will use those materials to blackmail the victim.
Gagliardi said the program is available for free for any school district, church group or other organization that wants to help parents learn more about the issue. One of the first school districts to make use of it will be Peters Township.
Last month, Peters Township attracted national attention when 18-year-old Zachariah Abraham Meyers was arrested and accused of “catfishing” and extorting several teenagers.
Peters police allege that Meyers, a senior at Peters Township High School, set up social media accounts pretending to be a young woman and convinced the victims to send explicit photos of themselves. He then is accused of extorting some of the victims, threatening to release the material unless he received money.
Gagliardi said plans to bring the program to the school district were underway before Meyers was arrested. Meyers was not accused of using Roblox to target any of his victims.
Any organization that is interested in the Roblox program is asked to contact Gagliardi at rogagliard@pa.gov.