Addiction to mobile games continues to rise, especially among young children.
In Singapore, a 5-year old girl managed to spend SGD $1,480 on in-app purchases in just a month, on an online mobile game called Roblox.
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The 5-year old apparently made over 200+ transactions worth SGD $5 – $8 each on her iPad. It wasn’t until the bill came in that her mom realized how much her daughter had spent.
Roblox is a free-to-play online mobile game that has attracted over 160 million players across the world, most being children and teens below 16 years of age.
The game monetizes its users in the form of in-game currency called “Robux”, which can be bought in the form of in-app purchases.
Wang, a single-mother, told Lianhe Wanbao that she was shocked after receiving her StarHub bill of $1,480 for the month of June. At first she thought it was a mistake, only to later realize that her daughter actually made all those purchases.
She hopes that her experience will help raise awareness among parents to take greater caution of their children’s online spending habits, as many of these children are unaware of what they’re spending on.
“My daughter has no clue what was happening either. She simply clicked the ‘purchase’ button, and the transaction was made successfully,” she mentions.