Why Kids Are Obsessed With Roblox (A Short Explanation for Parents)

If you're a parent of a Roblox-obsessed kid, you might be wondering why this platform has taken over childhood.

The average Roblox player spends two and a half hours a day inside it. The platform has more than 100 million daily active users, and almost half of them are under 13.

So what is going on here?

To understand Roblox, it helps to look backward for a second.

When we grew up, play meant physically going somewhere. You met your friends after school, went outside, and used your bodies and imaginations to turn the world into a game.

You pretended to be Pokémon trainers. Or soldiers. Or dolls.

The game existed mostly in your heads.

Roblox has digitized that exact experience.

Roblox players create avatars that represent them. They don't all look the same. You can look like Barbie, Batman, or an alien in a tracksuit.

Then you take this character into what Roblox calls "experiences."

Not games.

Experiences.

There are millions of them.

Some are cozy.

Grow a garden.

Open a restaurant.

Decorate a room.

Some are competitive.

Survive a disaster.

Win a race.

Shoot the bad guys.

Kids are not just playing.

They're inhabiting these worlds.

And, importantly, they're doing it with other kids.

Roblox is the digital equivalent of meeting your friends after school at a specific place. Except instead of a playground, it's a server. And instead of running around pretending to be characters, you are actually the character.

For kids who are too young to have independence in the real world, Roblox gives them a little bit of agency.

They choose what to look like.

Where to go.

What to play.

Who to play with.

That sense of freedom is powerful.

Parents sometimes say "But it's just a game with blocky graphics."

Kids don't care.

Minecraft and Roblox both prove that realism isn't the hook.

The hook is autonomy, identity, and belonging.

And yes, there is a social hierarchy built into all of this.

If a kid is particularly skilled at a popular Roblox experience, everyone knows it.

They become "good at something that matters socially."

For an 8-year-old, that's a big deal.

So why is Roblox popular?

Here's the simplest answer I can give:

Roblox is not a game.

It's a playground, a social network, and a creative tool bundled together, disguised as a Lego world, running on the cheapest computer in the house.

Kids use Roblox for the same reason we hung out at parks, malls, and friend's basements when we were kids:

To play.

To belong.

To feel a little bit free.

Maybe it's not the exact same feeling.

But for them, it's close enough.