Culture Kids are Protesting ICE in Roblox

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Kids are Protesting ICE in Roblox​

Recently, some Roblox players have been conducting virtual Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. There have been Roblox players dressed as ICE agents that barged into other player’s houses. They have "arrested" a user hiding in his kitchen and chased down another player while conducting “Border Patrol” surveillance. Roblox ICE agents hunted down a young player in his Roblox home, banging his door down.

Tensions reached a boiling point, and last week — as thousands took to the streets to protest ICE in the offline world — Roblox players protested within the game, battling cops, breaking down barricades, waving Mexican flags, and facing off across a line of players dressed in police SWAT gear.

Despite being primarily a children’s game, Roblox has evolved into a sort of emergent civic theatre for kids online. The game is now where thousands of children go to process major world news events through highly intricate role play. These simulations are how many young people experience news events, representing a shift towards more participatory forms of media.

Simon Gutierrez, a 17-year-old high school student who organized yesterday's Roblox protest against ICE, said that he wanted to attend the IRL “No Kings” protests this past weekend, but his older sister said no. So he staged a protest on Roblox to allow other young people to make their voices heard. “A lot of young people really want to protest and put their words and beliefs out there but are unable to, so this is the only thing we can turn to,” Gutierrez said.

The ICE protests in Roblox have primarily taken place in Brookhaven, a massively multiplayer role‑playing experience on Roblox. The experience's name is based on the real city of Brookhaven, GA, where offline ICE raids and protests are also taking place. Last Thursday, police arrested six people involved in anti-ICE protests in the IRL Brookhaven.

Roblox’s Brookhaven is the most‑visited Roblox experience ever with over 65–70 billion visits, and it has essentially become the internet’s default metaverse where events in the “real” world often play out in-game.

Since the initial ICE protest in Brookhaven last week, half a dozen more protests have been planned. Roblox users are posting dates and times on TikTok along with their usernames or Discord server links, in order to coordinate and solicit attendance for the rallies. The response from TikTok users has been enthusiastic.

This is not the first time Roblox has gotten political. In 2020, teenage Roblox users replicated the wave of protests against racial injustice and police brutality following George Floyd’s murder. Roblox users have also protested Israel’s assault on Gaza, staging pro-Palestine virtual protests in the fall of 2023. One pro-Palestine protest was visited more than 275,000 times. The protests against ICE have not yet reached that scale.

In-game activism also isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Even before Roblox, children mobilized in other game-centric communities. In 2016, Club Penguin users protested Donald Trump’s election. Some kids used their avatars to express political dissent at a time when they weren’t even old enough to vote. Players in Animal Crossingand Roblox also staged protest events pushing Hong Kong’s pro-democratic movement in 2020.

Roblox boasts about 85 million daily active users globally. In December 2022, more than four in ten Roblox gamers were 12 years old or younger, and 60% of users were under the age of 16, according to data from Roblox. But there are signs that the platform’s demographic might be slowly shifting.

While 32 million players — about 40% of Roblox’s daily users — are still under the age of 13, according to the company, 21% are between the ages of 17 to 24, and 18% are over the age of 25. The user base is aging up, and with older teens and young adults now making up a larger share, there has been demand for more mature content and experiences.

Role playing real-world events allows young people to experiment with their identity and political agency in a low-stakes environment. A recent study by Cornell University tracking kids aged 8 to 13 found that in-game roleplay and avatar customization helped kids explore their identities. Roblox, according to some kids I talked to, feels like a test-drive for the adult world.

Because of social media, kids today are simply more aware of the news than they were in previous generations. Young people see these major events taking place in the offline world and they want to participate. Roblox gives them a space to do that, whether it’s protesting or expressing your emergent political identity as a Trump-supporting ICE agent.

“A lot of participants are exploring and trying to see what they politically identify as,” Gutierrez said. Gutierrez noted that the players role playing as ICE agents within the game are also children.

There’s also the social aspect of it. Not only does participating in these events offer community, usually orchestrated through Discord servers, but there’s social clout to participating and posting about a viral event. Posts on TikTok about the ICE protests have amassed thousands of views on TikTok and YouTube.

As Roblox continues to grow in popularity and relevance, I’m definitely watching the evolution of Brookhaven specifically. Brookhaven won two Roblox Innovation Awards in 2024, one for “Best Roleplay/Life Sim” and one for “Best Social Hangout.” It was also nominated for Favorite Video Game at the Kids’ Choice Awards in 2022 and 2023. There are entire TikTok accounts solely dedicated to the happenings in Brookhaven, and even emergent news channels like Brookhaven News Official that act as local news channels for the game.

I predict that digital protests will also have greater offline political impact as the digital realm increasingly becomes default reality. And it will be interesting to see what effect digital political expression in games like Roblox has on young people as they develop their nascent political ideologies.

These Roblox protests are now many young people’s first form of political engagement, and I wonder how much these online, in-game experiences are shaping their views of the offline world.

Rather than freak out that kids, including some under the age of 12, are participating in political events online, Dr. Kei Nishiyama, lecturer at Kaichi International University, has argued we should foster young people’s digital political engagement. “No matter how we adults – or those who have political power – try to depoliticize children’s online experience, children can politicize it in an unpredictable fashion,” Nishiyama told Dazed in 2023. “Rather than depoliticize children’s experience, we have to acknowledge that children can be political – in other words, they are not future citizens, but citizens of today.”

“We’re children of the internet,” one young Roblox player said in the same story. “It’s what we use to navigate and understand the world.”

Gutierrez said, "Instead of doubting the Roblox protesters, people should try to understand where they're coming from.” Since Gutierrez’s first protest against ICE went well and he posted about it on TikTok, he’s been flooded with requests to stage another one. He’s planning another one, likely for next week.
 
Even if a youngster in my care was pro-ice this sorta nonsense would be retarded. You don't pay taxes. You have no exposure to these complicated issues, neither pro nor con. This is asinine.

Dipshits parading their "oh so empathetic" 8 year olds around are morons. It's the same flavor of person who troons their kids out.
 
Rather than freak out that kids, including some under the age of 12, are participating in political events online, Dr. Kei Nishiyama, lecturer at Kaichi International University, has argued we should foster young people’s digital political engagement.
Let's make our kids grow up to be neurotic busybody wrecks because some chick with a diploma said so.
 
remember when getting a bunch of teenagers organized online actually yielded positive results?
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. You don't pay taxes. You have no exposure to these complicated issues, neither pro nor con. This is asinine.
A great way to do this is to take their allowance for chores and give it to a homeless person, then sit in the car together and watch the homeless guy buy drugs or booze.
 
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Reactions: Marvin
So how long before we find out that the kid was manipulated into doing this my some illegal wetback pedo creeping around on roblox servers? No way in hell the average roblox playing kid gives a shit about ICE. Half of them probably don't even know what that is
 
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