Our 6 yo son played Bloxd IO (I think that's it) with his cousins and now wants to play it at home.

My wife and I are concerned about it having the chat function and it potentially being inappropriate for him at this age.

Any advice on this game specifically and also just overall monitoring of kids and online gaming?

I've never done it.

Thank you guys

My teacher wife would say zero games, and it's hard to argue with her based off what she deals with daily. I'm a bit more practical though, you have options. I don't know this specific game, but one of these could work.

Should be a chat off toggle in the setting menu (gear icon). You can just toggle chat on/off. It won't lock him out of re-adding it, but it's there. You'll need to monitor.

Another option is to try a browser extension, like Blocksite, to disable chat-specific URLs. If Bloxd loads chat from a completely separate domain, you could lock it down independently.

Yeah for starters I'd play the game myself, then play it with the kiddo. And yeah make sure you can keep an eye on things.

I played too many games as a kid but I honestly wish my dad had any interest in playing them with me. He couldn't stand anything I played though.

I'd say just tell them no. One of my kids is about to turn 7 and doesn't even know what a PS5, Switch, etc is. We've intentionally been sheltering our kids from the extra screen exposure and addiction that comes from video games. The only video games they play are learning ones they get exposed to in school.

I would say definitely not to possible randos on the Internet conversing with my young kids.

lotsofhp said:

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Our 6 yo son played Bloxd IO (I think that's it) with his cousins and now wants to play it at home.

My wife and I are concerned about it having the chat function and it potentially being inappropriate for him at this age.

Any advice on this game specifically and also just overall monitoring of kids and online gaming?

I've never done it.

Thank you guys

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Never heard of Bloxed but you might mean Roblox. I would read this:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/14/risks-children-roblox-deeply-disturbing-researchers

Don't listen to some of these posts from people with their heads in the sand. The oversight of your children for these games isn't to keep them from hearing people say naughty words. There are MUCH worse things that kids can get involved with, online. It's never something that has a serious impact on your kids' lives, until it does.

Agreed - "randos" is age-agnostic. I don't want my kids talking to anyone online without my knowledge of what's being said.

Quote:

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There are MUCH worse things that kids can get involved with, online

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Totally agree. My kids have both got sucked into the digital currency trend and wasted real money a lot of "vbucks" and dumb coins for in game purchases.

I don't have an opinion on allow/don't allow as my only experience with kids and games is my nephew who is allowed and needs the social interaction but Roblox is a hard hard HARD NO. Major grooming and trafficking issues not to mention they made Uvalde into a playable situation

As others have mentioned, the issue is around way worse things than hearing cuss words. I saw an article a year or two ago that cited online gaming (and specifically chat capability) as the #1 way that pedos find and eventually entice kids to meet with them.

We have a PS5 and Switch for my pseudo-step son. No wi-fi connection available for his profiles. He gets limited screen time as we've never been a fan of throwing an iPad or phone in front of him to shut him up when out to dinner.

He can play for a couple of hours so mom and I can sleep in (8 AM) on the weekends. Otherwise it's sports w/ me or family friendly(ish) TV/movies.

He's nearing the age where the reins will come off, but his regular behavior has to warrant it.

Church mustve been a close #2!

This post is about screens/gaming and lessons learned. We let our now 9 year son play games on our phone and on the i-pad his grandmother bought him. He gradually increased to more and more time, to the point of going too far with gaming. We started awarding game time to household chores, yard work for his age, etc. Then we enrolled him a private school for boys last year. The school is very heavy into sports. He always played soccer but now he plays flag football, lacrosse, baseball, soccer, tennis and golf. Yet still he liked to get on our phones or his i-pad as much as he could. After doing some reading and talking to other parents we made the decision to cut way back. This took a lot of patience, not caving in. He now is allowed 2 hours a week, that is, if he completes his chores. His creativity re-blossomed and he now makes movies with his Legos, soldiers. We play a lot of board games. He loves RISK, Scrabble, Monopoly and chess. He is also really getting into Lego builds and modeling. He reads a lot as well. He's currently read over 100 books for the current year. The only game he plays now is Minecraft, offline. I can see some positives from the Minecraft game and he is longer an addict so were good with it. Sports is now more important to him. He does watch some Discovery, History and Nat'l Geographic stuff. Sorry to be so expatiatory, the bottom line is be very careful with screentime, gaming etc. I read the other day that the average elementary schooler spends 5-6 hours a day on screens/gaming. That's nuts.

Well, I failed the screen time game with my oldest. He is autistic and totally obsessed. Wife and I just used it as a crutch for our sanity when he was young, but they get older and now can't roll it back. We have limits and every parental app known to man, though most here would find the allowances laughable. Anything more and he would probably burn the house down...not really an exaggeration. We are holding strong on no social media though, our last stronghold and we'll fight until death for it. Trick is clearly be strong from the start...taking it away later is like forcing a heroin abuser to go cold turkey.