If your child plays Fortnite or Roblox, you’ve probably heard the phrase “it’s just a game” more than once. And it’s true — both are genuinely fun, creative, social experiences that millions of Australian kids enjoy every day without any problems. But here’s the thing: they’re not just games. They’re social platforms, with chat functions, friend requests, voice communication, and communities — and that means some of the same risks that apply to Instagram or TikTok also apply here.
That’s not a reason to ban them. It’s a reason to understand them.
Why These Games Are Social Platforms, Not Just Games
Roblox is arguably the bigger one to understand here, because it’s so often underestimated. It’s not a single game — it’s a platform with tens of millions of user-created experiences, its own virtual currency (Robux), a friends list, a chat system, and private messaging. Children as young as six play it. There are community forums, trading systems, and collaborative experiences that children can build themselves.
Fortnite, meanwhile, has evolved well beyond the original battle royale game. It now includes a Creative mode, live concerts, social lobbies, and a Party Hub where players can hang out and chat without playing at all. Players can communicate by text, emote, and — critically — by voice.
Both platforms allow players to connect with people they don’t know in real life. And while the vast majority of those connections are perfectly fine, some are not.
How Strangers Make Contact
It’s worth understanding the specific ways contact can happen, because it’s rarely as obvious as a stranger walking up and saying hello. In gaming environments, contact tends to unfold naturally through the game itself:
- A player teams up with your child in a game, performs well, and sends a friend request afterwards.
- Someone joins a server or game world your child is playing in and starts chatting in shared chat.
- A player offers to trade items, give away Robux, or help your child level up — building goodwill over time.
- Contact escalates from in-game chat to a request to move to another platform: Discord, Snapchat, WhatsApp, or Instagram.
That last point is significant. The request to move the conversation off the gaming platform is a pattern worth knowing about, because it usually means the person wants to communicate somewhere with less oversight and fewer safety features.
Voice Chat: The Part That Often Gets Overlooked
Text chat is relatively visible — it’s on screen, it can be logged, and children often don’t think about it much. Voice chat is different. It’s immediate, personal, and much harder to monitor. In Fortnite especially, voice chat is on by default in squad games, which means your child could be talking to strangers without either of you realising it’s happening.
For younger children in particular, voice chat creates a level of intimacy that text doesn’t. An adult who is deliberately seeking contact with children will often use voice chat to build rapport quickly — it’s harder to lie convincingly over voice for extended periods, but it’s also more effective at forming emotional connection.
This doesn’t mean voice chat is inherently dangerous. For older teens playing with friends they know in real life, it’s a normal and enjoyable part of gaming. But for primary-school-aged children, turning it off is a reasonable default.
What Grooming Can Look Like in Gaming
The word “grooming” can feel alarming, but understanding what it actually looks like in practice is more useful than avoiding the topic. In gaming contexts, it typically follows a pattern:
- Building trust through the game. Being helpful, generous, or impressive in gameplay. Giving gifts (items, in-game currency).
- Establishing a special relationship. “I only want to play with you,” or “You’re better than my other friends.”
- Testing boundaries gradually. Questions about age, school, where they live. Asking for photos. Comments about appearance.
- Isolation. Encouraging the child to keep the friendship secret, or discouraging them from telling parents.
- Moving off-platform. Requesting to chat on another app, often framed as a way to stay in touch more easily.
Most children won’t recognise this pattern as it’s happening — which is why open conversation, rather than rules alone, is the most effective protective factor.
Practical Settings to Turn On Right Now
Both platforms have safety settings that are easy to miss but genuinely useful.
In Roblox:
- Go to Settings > Privacy. Set “Who can chat with me in app?” and “Who can chat with me in game?” to Friends or No one for younger children.
- Enable Account Restrictions (under Settings > Security) to limit your child to a curated list of age-appropriate experiences and disable all chat.
- Set up Parental Controls with a PIN so your child can’t change these settings themselves.
- Review your child’s friends list together — if there are people they don’t know in real life, remove them.
In Fortnite:
- Go to the Epic Games account settings at epicgames.com. Under Parental Controls, you can set a PIN and restrict voice chat, text chat, and spending.
- Set Voice Chat to Friends Only, or Off for younger players.
- Enable Cabined Account settings for children under 13, which apply stricter defaults automatically.
🔑 Key Takeaway:
The most important setting on any gaming platform isn’t in a menu — it’s the habit of checking in. A five-minute chat after a gaming session (“Who did you play with today? Anyone new?”) is more effective than any parental control, because it keeps the lines of communication open and helps your child know they can come to you if something feels off.
Keeping Communication Open With Your Child
The temptation when we learn about these risks is to clamp down hard — ban voice chat, disable the internet, confiscate the device. And sometimes that’s the right call. But more often, the most protective thing you can do is make it easy for your child to tell you when something happens that makes them uncomfortable.
That means not overreacting when they do tell you something. If your child mentions a weird interaction and your immediate response is to take the game away, they learn that honesty leads to punishment. Instead, thank them for telling you, investigate together, and decide as a team what to do about it.
It also means getting curious about the games themselves. You don’t need to become a Fortnite expert — but even watching your child play for ten minutes, and asking genuine questions about what they’re doing, builds the kind of relationship where they’ll feel comfortable coming to you when things get complicated.
Because they will get complicated sometimes. And when they do, you want them to tell you.