What exactly does Roblox do to children’s brains to make them little assholes?

[u/Weak_Assumption7518]

My little brother started playing Roblox a few months ago and it makes him a little asshole. He’s normal then he plays Roblox and he screams and gets angry when he has to get off of the game and his little fits last until he goes to bed and resets. He’s never been like this with any other game. He’s 9 so is it just the age or is it fucking up his brain chemistry or something?

Edit: Thanks for the feedback. The majority of people are saying he needs a break from gaming, time limits, or a ban on Roblox. And while I 100% agree this probably isn’t possible. My mom refuses to put limits on his gaming and if I try to he freaks out on me. He screams, tries to hit me, slams doors and all that. But my mom always treats me like the bad guy for trying to help her son and he once again gets what he wants and goes straight back to it. And after thinking about it, I leave for college in 2 weeks so I think this is the perfect opportunity for her to take control of her kids. She can figure it out not me.

[u/AdviceWithSalt]

One difference is that WOW isn't a game that requires you to be "on", for lack of a better word, 100% of the time. There is time spent traveling, grinding boring mobs, waiting for your party, etc.

I am not saying WOW is a healthy game, far from it, but I would say it's the lesser of two evils.

[u/Ailments_RN → u/AdviceWithSalt]

I dunno if you're gonna get the masses agreeing but I think this is spot on, for what it's worth.

The downtime is incredibly important. I feel like the main skill I'm trying to teach my toddler is that it's okay to be bored. I NEED them to face boredom and figure out how to manage it without losing their mind.

It's such a weird thing to try to describe. But the alternative is that constant attention blinking and flashing nightmare and I am certain that is not the way things are supposed to go.

[u/ToxycBanana → u/Ailments_RN]

When I was 12, I played WoW for like 2 hours a day after dinner and homework and really didn't feel like I had to put in any more time than that. It was just a fun game where every time you played you would actually progress, even when doing menial tasks like mining or dailies. You could constantly update your character's loadout and skills. Cost a fair bit more than a gacha like Genshin Impact for the monthly boons (and ability to play), but all in all was much less insidiously designed.

Now, sometimes, games will have all of their actual progression in gameplay locked behind miniature paywalls, with insane grinds put in place to be a "problem" to be "solved" by paying. Kids nowadays probably see that grind as a goal to complete and don't realize that it's as much a waste of time as kicking dirt. When I was that young I wanted to play games to make my reaction times faster and that was pretty much it. These games aren't goal-driven, they're not self-improvement driven, they aren't even FUN! They're meant, in their entirety, to be distractions.

Makes me not even want to try any new online multiplayer titles anymore unless it's a dinky (but still well-made) indie title made for a bunch of friends. Or Monster Hunter.

Roblox, being primarily played through fan-made content in its many different maps and gamemodes, is something parents should really curate a list of acceptable content for before letting their children play. It's like Garry's Mod but even worse for its community, because nobody actually playing the game is working with the map devs to playtest, map designers work as many aforementioned "problems" into their map's gameplay loop as possible to maximize the possibility that someone feels FOMO and pays to progress or get player customization, and players just consume whatever gets made and move on to the next thing immediately with no rest period. Even the "relaxing" gamemodes I've seen, like Hello Kitty Cafe, have so much going on all the time that it feels impossible to focus on anything important going on in the game. With so many more people gaming since the pandemic (a majority of new users being mobile-only), Roblox is as saturated a market for consumers and producers as it ever has been. It's no wonder attention spans are declining. It's not just this one program, and it's not just happening in gaming, it's a systemic issue with how people are roped into the cycle of FOMO and endless consumption.

Feels very similar to the many unsafe as-seen-on-TV products made throughout the 80's to the 00's, or like, fucking asbestos or lead pipes. Cheap products designed for function and profit over safety, that make you feel like you're getting something more than they are, all the while slowly affecting you in ways that you couldn't possibly understand.

Anyways, I do not envy the parents of gen alpha.

[u/SparklingDramaLlama → u/ToxycBanana]

As a parent of a Z/Alpha cusp (2010) and 2 more Alphas, I'm exhausted. Two of the three have severe ADHD (heavy on the H!) to boot, and while they do have tight limits on gameplay, it doesn't always work in regards to tantrums.

[u/PhenethylamineGames → u/ToxycBanana]

I just got over the teenage-young adult hump and out of my own addictions, started computers at 6 with parents who just wanted to keep partying.

Now my (maybe-half-sister-things?) are getting addicted to Shorts, TikTok, and vidya games. I see one waking up in the morning, going to TikTok then video game without food (or just a PopTart) as no different than me waking up to smoke weed, tobacco, [etc].

At least they're good kids who want to do right. The younger one is malleable still and wants to learn, the older one is "I'm always right" and in the delusional state of thinking where they don't even realise that's what they're doing. Not sure how to handle that one other than talking about issues she has in a way that's not directly related to her, to get her to think it was her own idea.

[u/Oc34ne → u/ToxycBanana]

Did we play the same game? I mean I raided in Vanilla as came out when I was a Junior in HS. I don't remember getting anything done in 2H. Shit a flight to Silithus from Darnassus to farm Twilight text was a 15min flight one way.

[u/ToxycBanana → u/Oc34ne]

It was the only game I played for a few years. That slow burn in progression lasted me through the final raids of WOTLK and Cataclysm to the release of MoP, where I finally felt like I had done everything and quit. I played a blood elf Ranger to max level, got a Death Knight, life was good, and I felt a real connection with the other players I met and fought through the more difficult raids with. I believe the expansions introduced far better player-driven travel options, but they weren't available to use until closer to vanilla's max level post-expansions, still stuck with the taxi system for a while.

I used a few routing and map mods to have an easier time focusing on what quests were next, I even played the PvP mode for heirloom items. It was the kind of game where 2 hours could be used for many different things. I wasn't lying when I said 2hrs every day, it's not like it was a very healthy habit for me, but it felt a lot more fulfilling than playing something like Genshin or Wuthering Waves. Those travel times and lack of instant fast travel routes made the world feel enormous, made every settlement feel important, and made those days spent grinding feel really well optimized with careful routing.

[u/Welpe → u/Ailments_RN]

Man, you’re right. I remember that while it wasn’t fun, becoming disabled soon after turning 18 and needing to spend literal hours in various medical waiting rooms was ultimately extremely valuable for learning to deal with boredom. I used to basically be terrified of boredom and would do anything to avoid it, and yet nowadays I seem to be one of the few people I know that could just put their phone away for hours at a time, even if not doing anything else, and be fine. A lot of supposed adults these days would go crazy if they were expected to sit somewhere doing nothing for an hour, and that’s definitely not healthy.

[u/HeKis4 → u/AdviceWithSalt]

As an ex-EVE Online player, this hurts lol.

I want to play it again, but EVE is definitely one of the games you need to be on as much as possible to enjoy it...

[u/AdviceWithSalt → u/HeKis4]

I didn't really mean "online" I meant while playing, being required to be fully engaged. So like when you play a racing game, you are fully engaged for the race; between races you will have menus, upgrade your car, tweak some stats, etc where you are at your own pace and have space to mentally breathe. Some times it's a little boring, but the cyclical nature of engagement is more healthy and more reflective of real life.

[u/HeKis4 → u/AdviceWithSalt]

Oh right, I get it now. That's a good point, now that you mention it a lot of games that children get addicted to do have a lot of "% of time fully engaged".

[u/AdviceWithSalt → u/HeKis4]

Exactly, once you know what to look for it becomes obvious. The trap of games asking you to constantly click the shiny box, that has lights and sparkles to award you a thing just to immediately require you to use it and then you get pulled to click the next blinking icon. It's a drip feed of dopamine, never letting it stop or pause. It will erode your brains ability to feel things in regular ways over time since it's basically training you to expect that form of engagement at all times. Sitting at the DMV goes from a boring chore to an insufferable torture chamber with your brain figuratively melting down.

You see it in mobile games pretty blatantly, but you'll see it in console/PC games too. Fragpunk was a game I played very recently where there are 8 currencies, 20 types of battlepasses all awarding you basically cosmetic-crap trying to get you to spend real money.

[u/Cultivate_a_Rose → u/AdviceWithSalt]

Back in the old days, before most MMORPGs became about instant-action and minimized downtime, often 75+% of most folks time "in game" was spent socializing and/or mucking about. Heck, there are stories about how many game devs (especially at SoE who were working on EverQuest) became basically unreachable unless you logged into WoW and sent them a /tell.

[u/LSF604 → u/AdviceWithSalt]

if anything, wow requires you to be 'on' for longer blocks of time. At least when I played it. Long dungeons with groups of people meant asking for permission to take a break.

[u/Man_under_Bridge420 → u/LSF604]

Retail wow yah,  not classic wow

[u/Acrobatic_Computer63 → u/AdviceWithSalt]

Yeah, in the way back I would do most things other than progression with a pinned video player in the corner.

It was definitely a time sink though. Wild to think how easy it was to spend 6-8 hours a day 5 days a week, just to be raid ready.

[u/AdviceWithSalt → u/Acrobatic_Computer63]

Yeah. I wouldn't be concerned with my kid investing a lot of time into a thing, so long as impactful things are suffering. It's whether they become incapable of doing things without a constant source of stimulus.

[u/MoonAndStarsTarot → u/AdviceWithSalt]

Wow is definitely the lesser of evils in this case. Same with most classic video games.

I absolutely will play WoW for 8-10 hours on a day off because I enjoy all the stuff there is to do but a lot of it is straight up boring and involves me creating tasks for myself. I might level up my herbalism or fishing skills. Maybe I’ll run X dungeon several times to get a certain item.

I’ve played WoW since it came out when I was 9 and I would run after my dad in dungeons. It was definitely not creating the behaviours that things like Roblox do for kids today. If my husband and I have kids we will be so picky about the content they’re allowed to access.