Nine-year-olds Meya and friend Nina Grop love Roblox games and are learning to program their own games on the platform. Nina gets her weekly allowance in the game's own currency, robux, and Meya also if she takes out the garbage, she says. The money can be used to buy equipment and clothes inside the games.
But the expensive products attract criminals, SVT's review shows. Both children have been scammed many times. Meya has completely stopped buying equipment in the game "Murder Mystery 2" after losing all her stuff there, she says.
Meya and Nina are not alone
There are no statistics, so SVT asked children who watch Lilla Aktuellt if they had been scammed. Two thousand responded, and several children also wrote in the program's chat.
"Got scammed on a horse in wild horse" writes "Coco".
"Saltgurkan" describes that she has been tricked into handing over her pet, just like when SVT's reporter was tricked in the game. "I was scammed in Adopt me, she said she would give me a pet then I gave the pet and she leava".
Several children have lost a lot of money and valuable "skins".
"I've had a mega neon dragon, been scammed, I was going to get a mega neon frost dragon," Nellie writes.
"I was scammed by my robux, 10,000" writes "hejj", and "Luleå" writes: "I was scammed of 500,000 in a game".
Dangerous lack of transparency
The risky situations that children can put themselves in the games are not just about being tricked, and parents often have little control, according to lecturer and author Maria Dufva, who specializes in children's vulnerability online. There is a risk that other people with criminal sexual tendencies are also hiding in the games. She warns that children communicate with strangers without transparency.
"Where there is a bubble that feels safe for children, they can be exposed to dangerous situations," she says.
"You shouldn't trust anyone," says Meya Hammarström. But at the top of her Christmas wish list is still three thousand kronor in robux.
"But I'm wary of scammers now.