upworthy

games

Family

Parents applaud mom's video telling her 7-year-old why he can't play 'addicting' Roblox anymore

It's an "open loop" with "no actual end."

via Roblox Newsroom and Canva

A boy playing Roblox.

Since its launch in 2006, Roblox has become a cultural phenomenon with 214 million monthly users and over 70 million daily active players. It's become a cornerstone of Gen Z and Gen Alpha childhoods. For the uninitiated, Roblox is an "imagination platform," where users can create their own games and play them with users around the world.

The game is incredibly popular, but it's not without its detractors. Some criticize the game for being open-ended, where, unlike Super Mario Bros., it can continue indefinitely, which gives it an addictive quality. Also, given the interactive component, it has been seen as a haven for political extremists and pedophiles.

Marla Branyan, a mother who goes by @Marla_Branyan on TikTok, is receiving a lot of applause from fellow parents for a video where she tells her seven-year-old son that he can’t play Roblox anymore and then explains it to him in a language he can understand. Since being uploaded, it has nearly eight million views.

@marla_branyan

I’ve gotten 2 emails in the last week about class action lawsuits against Roblox…. What I said here just scratches the surface. #roblox #nomoreroblox #parentsoftiktok #videogames

“So, number one, Roblox is made up of a bunch of different games, and there are people who create those games like players, and they don’t always have the best interests of little kids in mind,” she explained. “There’s some content on there that’s suggestive.”

She added that she doesn’t like that the games are open loop, so they never end. “Which means when you kind of complete something, there's no actual end to the game. It shoves you into the next level or the next portion of the game. So there's just like no end,” Branyan continued. ”It just keeps going and going and going. And that keeps you kind of addicted, and it keeps you wanting to play the game.”


Branyan’s video did a great job at modeling what a conversation with a seven-year-old about video games might look like for parents who want their child to have less screen time but aren't sure how they will react. It was also applauded by those who’ve said no to Roblox in their homes, too.

"As an adult, I play Roblox almost every day. And it is NOT a game for children anymore, unfortunately," one commenter wrote. "The Roblox parental controls don't really work, so we don't have that in our home anymore," said another.


Another big reason why parents should be concerned about their children playing Roblox is the number of sexual predators on the platform. In 2019, Roblox self-reported 675 cases of suspected child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In 2020, that number grew to over 2,200 cases. By 2024, the number had multiplied 11-fold to 24,000.

According to Wired, hundreds of lawsuits are about to be filed with allegations that the platform facilitated sexual exploitation of children. “I would assume by the end of September there should be about 100 to hundreds of these [lawsuits] pending, and I would assume by this time next year you'll probably be looking at over 1,000 of these filed,” Matt Dolman from Dolman Law Group told Wired. “We alone already have about 300 of these cases.”

Roblox may be a big part of many childhoods these days, but parents like Branyan remind us that parents should still empower themselves to set boundaries. In her viral video, she proved it doesn’t have to be hard to show kids that some choices just aren’t safe.





From Your Site Articles
video games
FamilyMotherhood
Joy

Bring old-school family fun back to the table with these 10 all-age board games

These games are simple enough for young kids to learn but enjoyable for grown-ups as well.

Amazon

Finding games that are fun for all ages can be a challenge.

As a participant in the Amazon Associates affiliate program, Upworthy may earn proceeds from items purchased that are linked to this article, at no additional cost to you.

Ah, the joys of family game night. Bonding with your loved ones over the rush of competitive adrenaline. Friendly (hopefully) rivalries and vendettas as you try to vow to vindicate yourself after a crushing defeat. Kids and adults alike learning the subtle art of trash talk—but in the end, also learning to be good winners and losers.

The benefits of playing games together as a family are wide and deep, as games develop both mental skills and shared family memories. And when those games don't involve screens, they can provide a nice tactile respite from the virtual world.

However, finding board games that are simple enough for young kids but don't turn into "bored games" for adults can be a challenge. Most games that adults enjoy are too complex for the kindergarten kiddos and most little kid games are mind-numbing for grown-ups.

But some games strike just the right balance between simple-to-learn and challenging-enough-to-be-interesting, making them fun for nearly all ages. (By the way, even when a game has an age recommendation, that doesn't mean a younger kid can't play it. Just make sure they're past the choking hazard age of putting game pieces in their mouths.)

Here are 10 games that people say their whole family enjoys, from age 4 or 5 all the way up to the grandparents.

Sequence

SequenceAmazon

Sequence is kind of a mix between a card game and a board game, and it's a great introduction to standard card decks for very young children since they don't need to know the values of them.

On your turn, you place a colored chip on a card on the board that matches one of the cards in your hand, which you then discard and replace with a new card from the draw pile. The goal is to get five of your colored chips in a row on the board. One-eyed jacks let you remove another player's piece and two-eyed jacks are wild. Simple, fun, largely based on the luck of the draw but you can also utilize some strategy to increase your chances of winning.

Find Sequence here.

Blokus

BlokusAmazon

Blokus is a great game for increasing geometric awareness, and it's also fun for everyone. On your turn, you simply lay one of your pieces on the board, touching any of your other same-color pieces but only at the corner. It starts off easy, but becomes more challenging as the board fills up. The goal is to fit the most pieces on the board. When no more pieces will fit, the player with the fewest remaining pieces wins.

Find Blokus here.


Labyrinth (Junior and Original Editions)


m.media-amazon.com

Labyrinth and Labyrinth Junior are both great for a huge range of ages, but if you've got very young ones (like 4 or 5) you might want to start with the Junior edition. Don't worry, it's still fun for adults, but the regular edition is just a bit more of a challenge.

The goal of the game is to collect treasures along the maze, but on each turn a player moves part of the path, changing the way the paths interconnect. The game play is simple, and it's a great one for helping kids understand strategy without directly having to teach them.

Find Labyrinth Junior here and Labyrinth (original) here.


The Uzzle

The UzzleAmazon

The Uzzle is an arranging game, and if you've ever played something like this with kid, you know they can legitimately beat adults at it. There are two main ways to play The Uzzle. Each player gets five cubes with different colored shapes on each size. Then you either have each player draw a card with a pattern on it and whoever arranges their cubes to match their card first wins, or you draw one card that everyone uses and races to complete before anyone else. The cards have four difficulty levels so play can be adjusted to meet the level of players.

Find The Uzzle here.


Dragomino

Dragonimo Amazon

Dragomino is a younger player version of Kingdomino, which is a fan favorite people also say is good for a wide range of ages. Game play is a little challenging to explain without having the pieces in front of you, but here's how it's described:

"Dragomino is a Card Drafting and Tile Placement game using a Pattern Building mechanic. It’s like playing dominoes with a twist! On your turn, Pick a domino to add to your kingdom. Try to match it to the dominoes already in play. Each matching dominoes scores one egg. which is either empty or has a baby dragon inside! Who will find the most baby dragons?" And the reviews are stellar for both Dragomino and Kingdomino (which has a similar game play, just not quite as simple and without the dragon theme).

Find Dragomino here and Kingdomino here.


Qwirkle

QwirkleAmazon

Qwirkle is Mindware's best-selling board game, providing fun for families since 2006. It's a tile-laying game, similar to Dominos, but with its own twist. Here's a video that explains how to play in two minutes. Basically, you make rows based on either color or shape, playing your tiles and drawing more so that you always have six tiles to work with on each turn. You earn points based on the tiles you play and the player with the most points wins.

Find Qwirkle here.


Yahtzee

YahtzeeAmazon

Yahtzee is a classic for a reason. Though it says ages 8+, younger kids can play with the help of an adult to keep score. Since the play itself only involves rolling the dice from a cup, any age kid can play, and it's actually a great game for teaching adding as they learn to keep score themselves. Super simple and based almost entirely on luck of the roll, it's exciting no matter how many times you play it.

Find Yahtzee here.


Spot It!

Spot It!Amazon

Super simple in play and a test of everyone's powers of observation, Spot It! is more fun than it sounds. Everyone has a stack of cards with the goal to be the first one to get rid of them by matching an item that's on their card with an item that's on the card on top of the discard pile. The items on each card are different sizes, so it's not quite as easy as it sounds. But it's simple enough that the youngest kids can play.

Find Spot It! here.


Buildzi

BuildziAmazon

If you've ever played the dice game Tenzi, Buildzi is from the same creator with a similar premise, only instead of rolling dice, you're racing to stack shapes. Stacking games are a good challenge for all ages, and kids even sometimes have an advantage due to their small hands. Grown-ups may have more developed fine motor skills, though, making for a delightfully even match up. To play, each player gets a card with an arrangement of blocks they have to stack to match without the stack falling over. Kind of a Jenga meets Tetris meets Tenzi game.

Find Buildzi here.


Pengoloo

PengolooAmazon

It may look like a game just for little kids, but any adult who enjoys memory games will enjoy Pengoloo. Super simple play instructions from the game maker:

"On each turn, players roll the color dice and look underneath two penguins for eggs of the same color. If you guess right, the penguin hops on your iceberg. But watch out, other players may remember what egg it hides and steal your penguin on their turn! The first to collect six penguins on their iceberg wins."

Find Pengoloo here.

Happy gaming, everyone!

From Your Site Articles
games
JoyCommunity
Family

30 simple, active learning games parents can play with kids that don't involve screens

People are loving these fun, wholesome ideas to get kids' bodies and brains moving.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels

Whole-body movement is good for children's development.

As every parent knows, kids have energy for days, and figuring out how to channel and focus that energy to preserve your home and your sanity can be a formidable challenge.

Sending kids outside when they're bouncing off the walls usually works, but that's not always an option. Often when kids are stuck inside, we resort to screens (which can overstimulate their sensory system) or calm indoor games (which don't stimulate their energetic bodies). Both have their place but aren't great for getting the wiggles out.

That's why parents are loving a viral video that demonstrates 30 simple, fun parent-child activities and games, combining full-body movement with fun challenges that stimulate both the body and the brain.

The video, shared on Facebook by Simple Life, has 55 million views and thousands of comments from parents praising the way it shows parents and kids doing fun, healthy, educational activities together without a screen in sight. And the best part is that most of them require simple props parents likely have around the house or that are easy and inexpensive to find.

For instance, in one game, a parent stands on a stool and tosses a tissue for a child to catch. Super simple, but tissues fall in unpredictable ways, so it requires a child to use their hand-eye coordination and quick reflexes.

Another example is a parent facing away from a child and tossing soft balls or stuffed animals behind them, with the child catching the items in a basket. Again, super simple, but builds gross motor coordination.

Watch:

Such whole body games can help children through important developmental stages, encouraging things like bilateral and midline-crossing movements, which are activities that requires kids to reach across their body. It may seem like a simple movement, but according to occupational therapist Colleen Beck, if a child has difficulties with crossing the midline, they will demonstrate challenges in almost every functional task.

Games like those shown in the video also help kinesthetic learners, who learn best through movement and tactile activities. Kinesthetic learners retain information primarily by doing, rather than seeing or hearing. But all kids benefit from a variety of teaching approaches, so these active, hands-on games that double as skills practice are good for everyone.

So many of the activities in this video are brilliantly simple, but things most of us simply wouldn't have thought of. Dropping tiles down a wall for kids to catch? Having them pick up balls with their feet? Who would think?

Even the balloon bum-wiping lesson in the beginning is a good way to simulate a vital skill. Notice how the woman demonstrates how to fold the toilet paper? A good first step for teaching a child personal hygiene.

Finally, these ideas offer ways to bond with your kids in fun, active ways that also sneakily teach skills and encourage strong physical development. Kids get to practice accuracy, speed and agility, parents get to watch their kids improve, and everyone has a good time doing it. And a bonus in the digital age: No screens involved. It doesn't get any more win-win than that.

From Your Site Articles
parenting
FamilyParenting
Celebrity

Chris Pine makes a compelling argument for kids to play Dungeons & Dragons in schools

He makes some excellent points about cooperation and imagination.

Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

Actor Chris Pine at San Diego Comic Con in 2018

Chris Pine plays the lead role in the film "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves," but until recently, he had never played D&D himself. Now that he's experienced the magic of the nearly 50-year-old roleplay game, he believes it should be played in schools.

Pine told Slash Film that his nephew has been playing D&D with a group of friends for six years, and he's the one who introduced the game to his famous uncle and a few other family members, including Pine's parents, who are 82 and 76.

"Within 15 minutes, we were having the time of our lives and we didn't have to know anything," he said. It was "immediately accessible," he said, especially in a family of actors, since the roleplaying game is essentially improv acting.

"It's, 'Here's what's happening. This is what you have. This is your obstacle. Now go,'" he said.

But it's the soft skills that the game encourages that left Pine feeling like the game should be played in schools.

"It immediately teaches cooperation," Pine shared with Slash. "It exercises the imagination. It's joyous, it's improvisational. And within a matter of minutes, everybody's on the same page. You're not arguing about whether or not you're cool or not. You're arguing about whether or not you should have gone over the boulder to kill the dragon."

"I think it's about the coolest thing I've encountered in a long time," he added.

Pine isn't the only one who sees a social and educational benefit to playing Dungeons & Dragons. Teacher Kade Wells, who saw the test scores of her ninth-grade Dungeons & Dragons club members rise, believes that playing D&D can make kids smarter. There is more than just anecdotal evidence to back that assertion up.

"Dungeons & Dragons, and other narrative role-playing games of its kind, provide many opportunities for learning,” David Simkins, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and an expert on games and learning, told KQED. “Participation in narrative role play can open up interests in topics such as mathematics, science, history, culture, ethics, critical reading, and media production. When D&D and its cousins are played in an inviting, encouraging, compassionate, and intellectually engaged environment, play opens the door to truly amazing possibilities for learning.”

Socially, D&D has come a long way since the early 1980s, when talking about your Dungeon Master or whipping out your 12-sided die would automatically brand you a geek or a freak. (For the record, those "freaks and geeks" are likely the reason we're all here on this website on whatever device we're on—yay for creative innovators who battled imaginary dragons in their friend's basement for fun.)

The game has grown in popularity over the years and it saw a huge surge during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now here we are with a feature film starring a handsome Hollywood heartthrob who publicly sings the praises of D&D. Who would have guessed D&D would become truly, genuinely…cool?

Perhaps the group of successful, professional 40-something-year-old friends I personally know, who have played D&D every Thursday night for years and years, would have guessed it. Some of them have known each other since high school, and they never get tired of the game. The open-endedness of D&D is part of its appeal—the possibilities for how the game can go are endless and dependent almost entirely on the imaginations of the players. No wonder it has stood the test of time and finally earned the respect it always should have had from the mainstream.

Watch the trailer for the D&D-themed film starring Chris Pine:

From Your Site Articles
games
CelebrityPop Culture
Trending Stories