Is Roblox’s ‘Rainbow Friends’ Really Child-Friendly? Or Scary?

Roblox, the popular online multiplayer game that serves as a virtual playground for players engaged in various activities, has gained immense popularity among younger audiences. With its vibrant meme culture and the ability for players to create and share virtual games, Roblox has become a favorite online destination for kids. Among the array of games available, one title has stood out in recent weeks – Rainbow Friends.

So, what exactly is 'Rainbow Friends' in 'Roblox'?

Rainbow Friends is a horror experience within Roblox that draws inspiration from games like Piggy, Five Nights at Freddy's, Poppy Playtime, and others. These games transform seemingly friendly environments into nightmarish scenarios, utilizing hair-raising scares and turning colorful characters into monstrous entities. Rainbow Friends belongs to this eerie genre and shares similarities with the aforementioned games.

The game unfolds over five nights within a mysterious facility. It starts with a group of Roblox players on a bus trip to an amusement park called Odd World. However, the journey takes a sinister turn as the bus crashes due to tampered directional signs, leading the players to be abducted and taken to a facility. Here, their objective is to collect items each night while evading colorful monsters to survive.

After each night, surviving players find themselves in a safe room, offering a brief respite to prepare for the next nighttime cycle. As expected, Rainbow Friends delivers jump scares and other terrifying events as players strive to escape their predicament.

Is 'Rainbow Friends' appropriate for kids?

Rainbow Friends’ fear factor primarily comes from the eerie sound effects of the monster’s movements echoing in hallways, jumpscares from the characters, and the unsettling background music. Although Rainbow Friends is more of an immersive horror experience that is somewhat tailored towards children rather than a gory spectacle, an early childhood educator still cautions parents about exposing their child to scary-looking characters or games, such as the Huggy Wuggy character, whose origins can also be traced back to a horror game.

Early childhood educator and member of the Smart Parenting Board of Experts, Teacher Thumby Server-Veloso says that her main concern about giving Huggy Wuggy or Rainbow Friends toys or introducing these characters to young children is that it "may give them the false impression that this character is something they can interact with on different platforms."

This could then lead the kids to watch videos of Huggy Wuggy and Rainbow Friends on YouTube without any hesitation. And as Teacher Thumby states, “given the history of [these characters] and knowing that it is a part of a game with violent themes inappropriate for very young children, then it would be more prudent to [introduce] more child-friendly, age appropriate options.”

Can young kids play horror or violent games?

Various studies have found immersive horror, violent, or other similar games might not be advisable for kids due to the following reasons:

Game Transfer Phenomena: Studies have found that gamers retain visual imagery and violent behaviors endemic in the game and transfer these to real life. Young children are more impressionable than adults, making them more likely to mimic what they see on TV or in video games.

Teresa Lynch from the School of Communication at Ohio State University explains, “Very young children cannot be told what they see online isn’t real… To them, it’s as real as anything that’s happening off screen." From the ages of 7 to 11 years old, children develop logical reasoning but their thinking remains largely concrete,tied to direct observation. Abstract thinking does not fully develop until around age 12 and continues into adulthood.

Psychological Impact: Playing horror games can elicit heightened tension, fear, and anxiety, resulting in intensified emotions and a changed mental state. Furthermore, these games may provoke nightmares, flashbacks, and intrusive recollections of in-game events.

Children's extreme vulnerability to fear and the challenge of alleviating it once it sets in is the reason why retired psychologist and researcher from University of Wisconsin Joanne Cantor advises against exposing children to horror and violent video games. She further states that studies have demonstrated that even a few minutes of terror, such as watching a horror movie, can create a powerful and enduring fear response in children.

In the past, parents were also concerned about Roblox’s popularity with kids. One parent issued a warning when her daughter’s avatar was “gang-raped” in the platform. Addiction, self-harm, violence, and exposure to online predators are the other issues parents have with the online platform.