MANILA, Philippines — A message arrived on the group chat of seven 15-year-olds in Calamba, Laguna, coming from a “friend” they met on Roblox. It contained a link.
They locked the doors to their room, hooked wireless headsets to their phones, pushed an earpiece to the left, to the right, and clicked the link.
Now they knew how to shoot their schoolmates. But the plan was to wait until the foundation day of their school on Feb. 16, so that everyone would be there – schoolmates, teachers, parents.
Their plan was thwarted when, on Feb. 2, members of the Philippine National Police came knocking on their doors. Based on the PNP case file shared with The STAR, the police told the parents the alarming things their children had been searching on the web.
The web history in question: images and videos of mass shooting; how to use a fire extinguisher for flash blinding; how to make homemade bombs; natural selection; Hitler emblems – the kind that would make any parent question where they went wrong.
They also had their statement outfits ready. They were planning to wear shirts bearing the phrase “Natural Selection,” referencing Eric Harris – one of the two shooters behind the 1999 massacre at the Columbine High School in Colorado.
They had also informed their “friend” from Roblox that they would die by suicide after the mass shooting, in another nod to Harris and his co-perpetrator Dylan Klebold, as both killed themselves after murdering 13 people and wounding 21 others.
What the seven teenagers were up to online was shared as a tip to the PNP Anti-Cybercrime Group (ACG) by foreign counterparts. The seven were exchanging messages with a certain individual on Facebook. The conversations were waving red flags – instructionals on aiming a gun and links to brutal videos.
Following police intervention, the seven turned over their phones for digital forensics, as authorized by their parents through an affidavit of consent.
The person they were talking to on Facebook turned out to be someone they first met on Roblox. The forensics confirmed that what used to be a foreign problem has turned up in the Philippines.
A pattern is now becoming evident: children are lured by strangers on Roblox. Then they move to other platforms like Discord and Telegram, where the radicalization transpires.
The Calamba teenagers are among the 19 minors whose online engagement has prompted police intervention this year. And there could be more, as indicated in the recent streak of violent activities in schools, including in Tacloban, where two minors killed three of their schoolmates.
Calamba case
At about 2 p.m. of Feb. 2 the PNP conducted what it calls a “rescue” operation in Calamba, Laguna involving seven children, all aged 15. The kids were planning a mass shooting based on information gathered by the Anti-Terrorism Fusion Group (ATFG).
The ATFG, led by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, sent the information to the PNP ACG on Jan. 13, and from there local law enforcers started doing surveillance work.
They talked to people close to the children, including teachers, to know if there were changes to their behavior at school recently. They directed the City Social Services and Youth Development Office (CSSYDO) to prepare social workers for the upcoming “rescue”.
It was a shock for the parents and guardians to find out that their children were watching videos of beatings, beheadings and shootings.
Social worker Lara, not her real name, spent most of her days in February and March working on six of the seven children who conspired to carry out a mass shooting. Six, because the seventh is waiting for further psychological intervention at the National Center for Mental Health (NCMH).
The STAR talked to several CSSYDO officials about the child, and they say the earliest he could be checked into the NCMH is in October, based on coordination with facility personnel.
Lara’s colleague Athena, not her real name, has been working as an assistant to social workers in CSSYDO for eight years. She was there on Feb. 2 when the police briefed the parents about the worsening radicalization of their children.
The child referred to NCMH, Athena recalls, would not speak a word nor respond to questions, so they assessed he needed to undergo psychological intervention.
“Mas malawak ‘yong kanyang intervention kasi hindi po nakikipag-cooperate si bata at palagay po namin ay kailangan pong kumausap sa kanya ay ‘yong talagang higher professional (The intervention must be more extensive because the child is not cooperating and we think he needs to be seen by a higher professional),” Athena tells The STAR.
During session days, Lara spends an hour with a child, but their activities would depend on how the kid wants to be approached. There are days when a child talks a lot, and there are days when silence embraces the room.
This is when Lara turns to other mediums to understand the children more, lending them pen and paper so they could journal, or art materials so they could draw. Lara says the aim of the sessions is to understand where the trigger to resort to violence emanates.
These children have owned a gadget, either a smartphone or a tablet, since they were six or seven years old, and it was likely through these devices they were exposed to radical content.
Based on the digital forensics on their phones, they had been watching videos of mass shootings abroad. They were also searching online how to cause flash blindness using a fire extinguisher.
The children, however, turned dead silent when probed by social workers about their “friend” on Facebook whom authorities think groomed them into violence.
Athena says the children know the suspected groomer, but they insist he was in no way involved in their shooting plans. When they spoke about him, they appeared to defend him.
“Kinumpirma namin kung kilala nila ‘yong tao, kung mayroon bang ganoong eksena, at inamin naman nilang kilala nila, pero wala silang dinisclose sa amin na sila ay tinuruan o inutusan na gawin po ‘yong mga bagay na ‘yon (We confirmed with the children if they know the person, if there was a certain conversation, and they admitted they know him, but they did not disclose to us that they were taught and told to do those things),” Athena says.
13 operations, 19 ‘rescued’
Police Major General Wilson Asueta scratches the bridge of his nose when asked if he plays the games his office monitors. He’s straightforward, says he prefers physical activities like running, and confesses he left gaming behind in the 1980s, to Galaxia Classic and early days Mario Bros.
Asueta leads the PNP ACG as director, and his office receives tips from foreign counterparts on how open-world games, including Roblox, are being used to radicalize children.
Between January and May this year, the PNP conducted 13 “rescue” operations to apprehend at least 19 children believed to have been radicalized into nihilistic violent extremism (NVE). The children intended to carry out fatal crimes, mostly school shootings.
London-based research Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which studies forms of extremism, defines NVE as “terror without ideology,” driving its believers to commit deadly acts because of a misanthropic worldview, or simply, a deep distrust in humanity.
Often, they contemplate committing mass shootings, stabbings or other deadly acts to show their general contempt toward humankind. At times, it becomes their way to build up notoriety within the groups they belong to, according to ISD.
Without an ideological foundation, NVE becomes more dangerous, as it eliminates the need for lengthy indoctrination, expediting the timeline for violent acts and making it difficult for parents, friends and authorities to detect, ISD says.
Asueta says it is incumbent upon the PNP ACG to track children who have fallen deep into NVE because often, it is only a matter of when they could find a weapon. Before they secure one, they have to be “rescued” or people could die.
On June 22, two minors with handguns opened fire at their schoolmates at the San Jose National High School in Tacloban City, killing three students and wounding 20 others.
Initial police investigation revealed the shooters regularly played the destroy-anything-you-want game GoreBox, which is assigned an R18 rating. Authorities want to know whether the violence inside the game contributed in any way, shape or form to the mindframe of the children.
However, numerous scientific studies have already debunked causal links between violent games and violent behavior.
What research confirms is that online games are being abused by hate groups to deceive children, exploiting in-game faults on age verification and chat functions. Afterward, they will migrate to a private channel where the groomer would introduce radical content to the victims.
When a tip arrives, the PNP ACG contacts the local police to do groundwork, which varies from engaging with school authorities to monitor the children, to directly dealing with the parents.
The latter is a hit and miss option, Asueta says, as parents would either cooperate with authorities or reject any insinuation that their child is becoming harmful. At times, parents will confront the police against monitoring their kid, warning them of a lawsuit.
“Mayroong mga magulang na they will misinterpret it, ang sasabihin, ‘Bakit, may crime na bang ginagawa ang anak ko, so why are you doing this?’ It is hard, you can be charged. Your intention is good, but there is resistance,” Asueta tells The STAR.
Commonly, parents fear for the long-term repercussions of bullying and discrimination if people find out their child was apprehended by the police for plotting violent activities. Parents also feel they wronged their child, and the shame kicks in, of failing to spend more time, of being unable to notice changes.
This is why even though the PNP ACG had already “rescued” 19 children this year, only a select few were reported in the media, because the cases are too sensitive to be publicized.
A global trend
Elsewhere in the world, especially in the US and Europe, there are many children similar to the Calamba minors. They were simply playing Roblox, met a stranger who befriended them, asked whether they had a chat account on Discord or Telegram, and exited the game to talk in private.
In February, The New York Times reported how hate groups are using games with open chat, such as Roblox, to create the next generation of violent extremists.
The United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, in its October 2025 report, said children now make up 42 percent of terrorism investigations in Europe and North America. The numbers have quadrupled since 2021.
Overseas, the study named multiple games and platforms where terrorist groups have been trying to connect socially with children, the likes of Fortnite, Steam and Xbox Live.
Roblox, however, appears to be the perfect channel to infiltrate mobile-centric Philippines, where almost 18 million smartphones were purchased in 2024 alone. Around 5.1 million Filipinos play Roblox daily, most of them kids, based on estimates.
What the Philippines has right now, Asueta says, are children drawn to online NVE, such as the minors from Calamba, as shown in the digital checks on their phones.
However, Asueta warns the problem could become bigger if internet coverage in the countryside improves rapidly. To date, all “rescued” children came from urban centers, and Asueta says this is because groomers need their victims always online.
“We have [operations] in Metro Manila, Southern Tagalog and Central Luzon, but so far hindi pa namin naaabot ‘yong mga tulad ng Mindanao, but I already directed my personnel to monitor,” Asueta says.
The areas mentioned by Asueta are some of the regions with the highest number of Filipinos who use the internet, based on data from the Philippine Statistics Authority. In Metro Manila, nearly four in five have internet access as of 2024.
This is why the PNP ACG is working with intelligence partners in tracking down inquiries from children about guns, whether on Facebook marketplace or on Reddit threads.
“Ang kinagandahan lang ‘yong opportunity nila, lalo sa instrumentation, wala pa silang totoong baril. Nagpaplano pa lang sila, nag-i-intervene na tayo. Ang iba diyan, may suicidal tendencies. Marami ditong may suicidal tendencies, kasi mayroon namang incidents na they are attempting to take their lives (The good thing here is in terms of instrumentation, they don’t have access to real guns yet. They were still planning, and we intervened. Some have suicidal tendencies. We have incidents where they are attempting to take their lives),” Asueta says.
If Roblox is becoming a jumpoff point for violence, why not ban it?
Ban the ‘Blox?
That has crossed the mind of Information Secretary Henry Aguda, whom The STAR interviewed in his Quezon City office on a rainy Thursday afternoon. He was looking up, tapping a finger on his chin, then came back with three answers.
Aguda says the reasons he raised the idea of banning Roblox before were, first, failure of its age verification protocols; second, failure to block inappropriate content and lastly, failure to inform the Philippine government of potential risks involving Filipinos, especially minors.
In the past, security experts for the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) found ways to register accounts on Roblox with a fake age. Aguda says these faults were raised before Roblox, frequently, repeatedly, but to no avail.
It was fairly recent, when the threat of a ban was made, that Roblox’s parent Roblox Corp. sent representatives to the Philippines to negotiate with policymakers like the DICT.
The ban was averted, with Roblox committing to introduce stricter age verification. On June 17, the game also launched a new feature that prevents adults from chatting with children.
Chatting is prohibited for children five to eight under Roblox Kids, while access gradually opens up for nine to 15, with the permission of their parents, under Roblox Select.
Aguda thinks this isn’t enough. He wants all digital platforms that serve the Philippine market to establish a local office, so they could be mandated to register with the government, pay taxes and be held accountable by domestic laws.
Aguda says this would make it easier for authorities to track down bad actors targeting Filipinos, particularly children, and connect the dots on whether games with its own currencies like Roblox are used for human trafficking, illegal transactions and terrorism financing.
In a Senate hearing on April 13, Roblox global head of public policy Nicky Jackson Colaco said the company does not build local offices in the countries where the game is present. Aguda says Roblox would be forced to if legislation requires it.
“Kapag nagkaroon ng ganoong rule, dalawa lang ang option ni Roblox, either mag-comply sila with the law, or mapag-utusan kaming i-block. ‘Yong law ay dapat hindi specific to Roblox, but to online platforms. Hindi lang dapat gaming, digital platforms in general,” Aguda explains.
Aguda lets out a sigh. Without legislative action, he knows these proposals would go nowhere.
“Nothing is perfect, but it (regulation) will address a lot of issues. Unang-una, taxation, kasi ang laki ng nawawala sa atin at second, content moderation, mas malakas,” Aguda says, when asked if his proposal would plug the regulatory gap.
‘Watch your kids’
Lara, the social worker who provided the Calamba children with psychosocial counseling, thinks it is easy to blame the internet for every wrong activity done by kids. The harder thing to do, she says, is to look inward for faults.
The six minors Lara took care of have completed the minimum number of three sessions that the CSSYDO requires of kids at risk, and they felt remorse for their actions.
One of them was almost always quiet during the sessions, never speaking, even when prodded by Lara, so she let the child be, bringing up other activities like journaling and coloring.
The CSSYDO monitors children for a year after the sessions are done, just to make sure they are fine reintegrating into society. The parents, meanwhile, are told to regularly check the phones of their kids.
For now, the police raid has struck fear among the children, Athena says, recalling conversations with their parents and friends.
This is why, Athena says, social workers prefer to call the initiation of contact with the parents of children at risk as “reaching out” rather than “rescue”.
More than semantic difference, Athena says “reaching out” prioritizes the psychosocial health of the children, not the potential criminality at play. After all, these kids are still kids, whose lack of maturity was abused by an adult, neglected by an adult.
As much as policies are needed, Lara says it is important as well for parents and guardians to be aware of red flags, one of which is if a child can no longer last a minute without their phone.
“Entire day nagce-cellphone, hindi na halos mabitawan, it’s a red flag po na kailangan si parent, nagre-reach out kay bata nang maayos. Ina-ask kung ano mayroon sa cellphone at bakit hindi po mabitawan (Entire day on the cellphone, almost never putting it down, it’s a red flag the parent must address by reaching out properly to the child. Ask the kid what’s on the cellphone that they can never put it down),” Lara says.
With legislation still in the works, Lara believes the duty of watching over children navigate the fast-transforming digital world rests on their parents, guardians, teachers and communities.
Four months later, the person who radicalized the seven kids from Calamba has yet to be found. In the April 13 Senate hearing, PNP ACG deputy director Romeo Desiderio said they exchange information with foreign partners and seek their help in hunting down the perpetrators.
Based on PNP ACG’s database, most groomers on Roblox are foreigners, so local law enforcers rely on their foreign counterparts to find the suspects and bring them to court.
However, Desiderio said it is important for authorities to locate the victims, so they could subject their phones to digital forensics. This way, the PNP can add to intelligence gathering that would later on be crucial for case buildups.
“We provide information reports sa ating foreign counterparts, so sila na ‘yong nagfo-follow-up sa areas of concern,” Desiderio said.
The recent streak of violence among children from Calamba to Tacloban places policymakers in a tough spot to respond immediately, whether by legislation or regulation. These incidents show that current responses fail to prevent similar outbreaks of violence in the future.
Reporting for this story was supported by the Journalists Against Corruption and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. It was first published by the Philippine Star.