For parents of Roblox-obsessed kids

Many parents I talk to report a mix of dismay, anxiety, and disappointment with their kids’ obsession with Roblox. “If only they would devote as much time playing Roblox to studying or working on a respectable extracurricular!” Something along those lines.

These parents have a point. It’s not like putting “Played Roblox 20 hours/week” as your no. 1 extracurricular on your college application will get you very far.

But these parents seemingly have no luck weaning their kids off their addiction. I’m guessing that most conversations that attempt to devolve into either:

“He’s hopeless,” or defeat — which lets your Roblox-obsessed kid devote the entirety of these precious years of brain development and identity formation to a video game. Your kid will not leave their bedroom and make formative memories. They will likely not become the young adult who one day changes the world.

“Get off that stupid game!” or its worse cousin, “Look how impressive your friend Elijah is! You think he plays nearly as much Roblox as you?” In other words, aggression — which creates an adversarial relationship between you and your kid, who will interpret anything you suggest from that point on (the moment you degraded their favorite activity) as something you’re imposing on them and their life, as something antithetical to joy. They love Roblox. And you telling them to stop loving it is likely not going to work out in your favor.

If you find yourself asking, “Well, then, what do I do?” you’re in the right place. I’m writing this post as a former gamer who ended up, in the eyes of many parents, doing just fine (I went to Yale) and who now teaches middle and high schoolers. 

My gaming obsession

I’ve never played Roblox, but I feel like I can comment on the topic because once upon a time, I was obsessed with the game Minecraft.

The summer before 7th grade, I would wake up, go straight to my computer, boot up Minecraft, play with friends over Skype, watch Minecraft YouTube videos while eating meals my mom would bring to my room, and then call it a night around midnight or 1am before doing it all over again the next day. Every day. That’s what I did for a whole summer. My mom thought my brain was going to rot in pixelated block form. She once took away my computer, and I had a meltdown. I had no idea how to spend my time. 

Looking back, it really was an addiction, and not a productive or healthy kind. Fortunately, before I fell into my Minecraft obsession, I got into a prestigious new school that, upon arriving, I felt immediately that everyone around me was much smarter than me and much less interested in Minecraft than I was. I also conveniently had a new 3 hour roundtrip commute to school every day. I simply had less time to play. 

I guess I could’ve not done my homework, and I guess I still managed to squeeze in a 10-minute Minecraft break here and there. I guess the most important reason I stopped playing so much was that the people who surrounded me were no longer the Minecraft-obsessed friends of my old middle school.

My friends at my new school tried very hard on their academics. At lunch, they wanted to talk about not leaderboards and YouTubers but current events. We all joined the debate team, and we were all really into it. I redirected my free time from Minecraft Survival Games to learning about modern political and economic affairs—yes because I was interested but equally to keep up with my friends.

By January of seventh grade, I was walking on the subway platform headed home one afternoon when I realized that I had not thought about Minecraft in a week. 

Let me be clear: I’m not saying you need to pluck your kid from their current environment and plop them into another and hope they meet kids who aren’t into Roblox. In fact, who’s to say that they won’t infect others with the Roblox bug? 

I more want to say that kids who get obsessed with Roblox are the types to get obsessed in general. Before I was obsessed with Minecraft, I was obsessed many years prior with Spongebob Squarepants. After I was obsessed with debate, I became obsessed—but at last, in a healthy way—with doing theater, which became my main extracurricular in high school. 

Maybe it’s Roblox now; maybe it’s another video game a year from now. Hopefully, it’s something else, something productive for society and intellectually and socially nurturing for them. But I’d hazard to say that your kid who’s obsessed with Roblox might have been obsessed with other things in the past, and is likely to find something to be obsessed with in the future. 

Which means you can’t just tell your kid to stop playing Roblox. You’re asking them to live with a void in their life. Instead, I’d suggest giving them something else to be obsessed with, something that they naturally redirect time towards, time once spent playing Roblox. And ideally that new activity is something that their friends or future friends are obsessed with as well. It’s a lot more fun to be obsessed with something together; a sense of community, of camaraderie, might even be the reason why your kid is obsessed with Roblox in the first place. 

Tactical empathy and becoming Roblox-conversant

I’m the first to admit that I got lucky in going to a new school at the height of my video game addiction where I naturally wanted to play less. Your kids—and perhaps most of all, you—may not be so lucky. Maybe it doesn’t seem like they’d ever turn their sights to a new obsession; thus, you feel a strong urge to intervene.

But how do you intervene with a kid so obsessed with something that you yourself aren’t? 

The answer lies in hostage negotiations. 

I listened to a New York Times interview with Chris Voss, a former hostage negotiator at the FBI who bases his negotiations approach in “tactical empathy,” the idea that you make someone feel “not agreed with, but understood” and that you’re “able to articulate the other side’s point of view without agreeing with it or disagreeing with it.” Once you establish empathy, someone who once seemed unbudging suddenly may become flexible, reasonable, and open. 

If it works for bank robbers, it can work for your kid.

Ask your kid what they’re doing in Roblox. Join your kid for a gaming session. Think of it as an investment that will enable you to eventually get them off the game but perhaps more importantly, to better understand them. Resist the urge to say anything remotely resembling “I think you should stop playing Roblox.” Instead, watch and listen carefully, because there’s a non-zero chance they’re working on something that may seriously impress you. 

Some kids playing Roblox learn to code to create more advanced games. Those working solely within Roblox Studio may not learn a coding language but learn, without explicitly seeking it, things like consumer psychology, user experience, and marketing. A few days ago, Bloomberg published a story called “Roblox Is Minting Teen Millionaires”: some kids never have to work a day in their lives again thanks to the success of the games they create on Roblox. 

I’m guessing your kid isn’t making millions off of Roblox. But what is your kid doing on Roblox? Have you ever gotten an in-depth explanation from them, or is it “just a game” to you? Put another way, does your kid feel understood?

If the answer is no and remains so, you and your kid are just going to end up in one of the two scenarios I outlined at the top, which is obviously unideal. If the answer is yes, then congratulations, there’s plenty of leverage to eventually wean them off their addiction. And if the answer is no but could be yes, then it’s time to start asking your kid what’s going on in Roblox these days.

Kids who play Roblox often have an instinct to create, to build something of their own. That instinct is something glorious that must be cultivated, not discouraged. That instinct throughout history has led to the creation of the world’s most innovative companies, of solutions that make the world a better place. 

Yes, that instinct's just housed in Roblox right now, and that's, I think, what many kids want their parents to understand. That they’re building games that bring joy to others, building things of their own in a world where they’re too young to really own anything. The worlds that kids are creating within Roblox give us a glimpse into the worlds that they could help forge in the future. Kids just want parents to see that flame in them. 

I look back at my Minecraft days with fondness. Obviously, I’m glad I stopped playing so much. But I also learned how to video edit and use Photoshop when I dreamed of becoming a Minecraft YouTuber. I learned the inner workings of my computer and became comfortable with staring at file code while customizing my game graphics. These are things that have somewhat astounded colleagues and others I’ve worked with over the years, and yet as a thirteen-year-old I don’t think anybody really knew what I was up to. 

I was discovering the power of technology and starting to conceptualize the idea of building something of my own. That flicker of a flame, I’ve realized, is precious and transformative in a world where people have traditionally after college spent the rest of their lives building nothing and instead keeping the gears of a corporate machine—one that thinks nothing of them—going. 

If I could talk to my younger self, I’d listen to him yap about things I don’t really care about anymore like texture packs and PvP servers. I’d tell him how rare it actually is in the adult world for people to build things of their own. And I’d tell him to keep going, that he can do so much in the world, as long as he doesn’t let that flame die.