My Kid Sold Her Soul to Roblox |
 | | Jackie Ferrentino |
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I’m taking a break from this week to get my kids acclimated to remote learning, so I handed the newsletter over to the prodigiously talented Emily Flake, a writer, cartoonist, performer and illustrator living in Brooklyn. She’s writing about how Roblox raised her daughter this summer, and how that’s not such a terrible thing. |
— Jessica Grose, lead editor, NYT Parenting |
I made a deal with the devil this summer. Lots of devils, if we’re going to be accountants about it. But one in particular weighs heavy on my heart: Roblox. |
I have never liked video games. Not for myself, and not for my daughter. I’m not uptight about screen time, but the addictive, immersive world of video games was something I’d hoped to keep her out of for as long as possible. |
And then, of course, the pandemic happened. |
When the creaky old laptop we’d been letting my daughter use for online school wheezed its last, I made a fateful choice. I got her an iPad, reasoning that it would serve as her laptop for years to come. Sometime in the not-too-distant past, I’ve said things like, “Why would anyone spend that kind of money on a device for a child?” I have had to go back in time, find those words, and eat them with a knife and fork. |
Say it with me now: This is what happens when we get smug. |
I had never heard of Roblox before we got the iPad. I thought maybe it was something like Minecraft, another game about which I know nothing. Even now I am unclear on exactly what Roblox … is. |
As far as I can tell, it’s not so much a game as it is a gaming universe. Players choose avatars, and move through frankly ugly landscapes and obstacle courses acquiring skills, objects and animals. You haven’t lived pandemic parenting until you’ve sat, bewildered, on your daughter’s bed as she sobs inconsolably because somebody scammed her out of her kitsune. |
Can you spend real world money in this game? You bet your mortgage — a friend in California forbade his son to use Roblox after the kid racked up $700 worth of in-game purchases. |
What makes Roblox so devilishly attractive is that it’s a multiplayer gaming world. When the actual world stopped being a place where children could go and meet their friends, it’s just the natural order of things that a digital world would pop up to replace it. |
My daughter got tight with the 10-year-old kid who lives upstairs who introduced her to it. They played for hours a floor apart from each other. She discovered that a lot of her other friends were on the platform, too. Then she figured out how to use FaceTime to talk to them as they played. |
How could I deny her a social outlet in a time when companionship had been taken from her? It would have felt monstrous. But let’s not sit here and pretend I let her do it just for her sake. I let her do it for mine, too. |
Roblox had become a babysitter, a youth group and a camp all in one. I have come to think of it as a place she goes rather than a thing she does. She can happily spend hours there and I hear nothing but screeches of “Teleport! Teleport to me!!” I wouldn’t say I get great work done while she plays, but I get *some* work done. Or some housework. Or some dispirited doomscrolling. |
I knew, abstractly, that there would come a time when I lost the child I knew. That my baby would become an adolescent, a gawky thing full of spite she could use as rocket fuel to blast out of my orbit. But my daughter is on the cusp of turning 8. I thought I had more time, and I never thought the fuel she burned would be supplied by me. |
Because I see her stepping into a new world, trying on new personae, different avatars. I see her deftly navigating a space in which I am all thumbs. When I tried to play, she typed in the chat bar: “Mom. Mom! Follow me, Mom! My mom is so bad at this and I’m trying to teach her but she is an amazing mom.” |
I appreciated the softening of the blow, but the truth is I am not an amazing mom. I let her move to a two-dimensional arcade because, in the depths of my torpor and sorrow this summer, I could barely string two words together, let alone get it up for a fun mother-daughter project |
Generally speaking, it sets my teeth on edge when parents (ugh, mothers, I mean mothers, it is always mothers) describe themselves as failing as parents, as though this were a competition or a job for which we might be awarded a gold star. But I found myself truly understanding that I wasn’t so much failing at the task of parenting as I was failing her. |
As we move forward into school time (a fraught and indefinite phrase), things are going to have to change around here. I have felt, this summer, like a woman drowning in Karo syrup. Sure, I’m depressed, aren’t we all? But I can’t pull her back into the real world if I can’t even get there myself. |
On one of the last perfect, golden days of summer, my daughter and I joined the family from upstairs at the beach. Their kid and mine play together in the real world a lot now, and they frolicked in the waves like seal pups, shouting with joy. The older kid is a strong swimmer, and he jumped fearlessly into the waves. But at the same time, he looked out for my daughter, and helped her navigate the choppy surf much better than I could. |
That friendship blossomed under the auspices of software, but it has come to flourish in the real world as well. It felt wholesome, it felt true. It gave me hope that maybe, despite my damningly poor showing, there’s hope for her after all. |
Want More on Kids and Tech? |
| Parenting can be a grind. Let’s celebrate the tiny victories. |
My 4-year-old hates wearing any pants except leggings, so having to wear khakis during this first week of remote Pre-K has caused a thunderstorm of tears every morning. On day 3 we struck a deal that she could wear leggings under her khakis, so finally day 4 was tear free!— Joyce Adesina, Dallas |
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