Dear parents/carers,
As many of you may be aware, Roblox is a very popular game among our students at the moment. The game is similar to Minecraft and it allows young people to create games for each other to play; create zones which they can modify; and change the appearance of their character. The game also has a peer-to-peer messaging feature.
Unfortunately it has been mentioned in the news that this game has been taken advantage of by paedophiles who have set up fake accounts and sent unpleasant messages to young people or invited them to play unsuitable games. Likewise, there have been instances of older players using inappropriate language when playing with younger players.
Fortunately, as far as the school is aware, none of our students have been directly affected by this. Nevertheless, at HFS we aim to promote the safe use of the internet and ask for you to do the following;
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Please review the game at https://corp.roblox.com/parents/ and decide if you are happy for your son/daughter to be playing this game. If not, can you please email your class teacher to let them know. It is known that children as young as 7 are playing this game.
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If you decide that you are happy for your son/daughter to play this game can you please set the account to be Under-13. This limits who can contact your son/daughter to only those people who are their friends. This also applies a filter to the in-game chat feature censoring out any messages which may contain offensive language.
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Talk with your son/daughter about internet safety including only adding friends whom they have met in real life to games like Roblox or on messaging applications like Skype, WhatsApp or Kakao Talk.
We hope that by following these measures the students will be able to play Roblox safely, develop the skills to be safe and conscientious internet users and develop some coding skills in a fun and enjoyable environment.