How Roblox Kids Could Decide the US Election
Dr Jo Orlando
PhD Digital Wellbeing Researcher, Keynote Speaker, Author, TV Presenter,
I was scrolling online this morning and stumbled across something wild: a voting campaign on Roblox?! Yep, turns out the race to the White House isn't just happening on TV and X anymore, it's invaded the world of kids' gaming.
What I found was both fascinating and a little terrifying.
Behind the Scenes
4 weeks ago, Roblox released "Virtual Vote." Before I get into this, you need to understand something: Roblox is huge. It has over 79 million users daily, and a massive chunk of those are kids. It's basically the biggest gaming platform in the world right now. So, a voting campaign within the game is important news.
But what exactly is Virtual Vote? It's not just some boring old ad telling kids to vote. It's way more clever.
They've actually created this whole interactive experience inside popular Roblox games.
Imagine your kid is playing Livetopia (which has billions of visits!), and suddenly they stumble upon this character called "Sam the Eagle." Sam's this friendly guide who starts talking about voting and encourages them to check their registration status.?
They even have interactive maps showing how voting works in different states. It's a whole new way of shaping kid’s thinking about politics.
Here's what else I uncovered:
? ? ?It's huge: over ? million kids have played this game within a game in the 4 weeks since release
? ? ?It's effective: 4000 players who played the Virtual Vote game actually went and checked their voter registration status. That's amazing!
? ? ?It's the tip of the iceberg: This whole thing got me thinking... if they can get kids to register to vote, what else can they influence? Could these games develop and shift to shape kids' political views without them even realising it?
Kids playing this mightn't be of age to vote now, but they will be in the future. Imagine what 4 or 8 years of playing 'Election' games will shape them into thinking?
Online games and social platforms are constantly shape-shifting and looking for new ways to engage with ever bigger global audiences.
Parents ?
Young people currently get so much of their news from social platforms that what happens on there is important. This is a perfect topic to talk with your kids about.?
Focus the conversation on the online content and what it says and why, rather than who they think will win. The aim of the conversation is to develop their Social Media Literacy, In other words, to help your child to think more deeply about what they are seeing online, why its there and what its trying to achieve.?
Read the full published article
Thanks everyone.
Dr Jo
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Data Girl and Friends | Digital Defender Parent | Empower Young People with Online Safety and AI Awareness
4 个月I wish I could say that this surprises me but it doesn't at all. The power of AI also means the ability to influence the way we see the world without us even noticing that it's happening. Of course, the most vulnerable to this happening are those, like youth, who haven't solidified their learning how to question the motives of everything they encounter, especially online. The earlier we shift learning from focus on standardized results to focus on critical thinking and the art of questioning, the better we can help.
Creative multidisciplinary square peg
4 个月Confronting revelations Dr Joanne Orlando, quite a startling read. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
Sr Advisor, National Center on Sexual Exploitation | AI Advocacy | Online Child Safety | Women's Rights | Human Dignity
4 个月I'm eager to read your full article Dr Joanne Orlando and am grateful for your sharing this phenomenon most parents know little about. But I'm also left at the end feeling the same way that Kitty Hamilton articulates --- the answer is not that it is on parents to have conversations with their kids. That will do so very little to influence them when it's all of tech standing against them. I'm definitely biased on Roblox and their so-called care for the young people on their platform. We have been calling them out for years due to the faulty and misleading parental controls, the rampant sexually explicit content, and the frequency of child predators using the platform to target kids and them doing very little about it while making billions of dollars from these kids using their platform. https://endsexualexploitation.org/roblox the answer to these challenges is not just "parents, do more." We need tech accountability. Please consider speaking more to that in your work. I know we see much differently, but you have to have come to the conclusion that parent conversations with kids is hardly going to have an impact.
Director at Kitty Hamilton Associates Ltd.
4 个月And here we have it again. This firm belief that Media Literacy is enough to combat the fast drip effect of social media on young minds. I challenge any parent to fight the power of Roblox and the behavioural scientisists and tech wizards supergluing our kids to smartphones. Will Orr-Ewing Guy Holder Emma Crosthwaite Sue Atkins Soban B. Smartphone Free Childhood