• by Colin Kirkland , July 11, 2024

After lowering age restrictions for Quest headset users last year, Meta has announced it will now begin allowing children ages 10 to 12 to connect with others in virtual reality (VR) calls on its Horizon Worlds platform, after receiving parental consent.

According to a recent statement, the technology giant believes connecting with friends is “what makes MR [mixed reality] and VR great” and is ready to give preteens the ability to connect in chats and direct calls with “parent-approved contacts.”

Meta's announcement highlights the company's insistence on parental controls. Parents, for example, must approve each individual contact on a younger user's list of contacts from their following and followers lists. The parent must also approve multiplayer MR or VR experiences for the child's access. And if a parent would like to delete an approved contact, they can do so at any time, the company explains.

The parental supervision tools build off what Meta introduced in 2023, upon allowing preteens to set up Meta Quest accounts. Despite a lack of definitive data on the psychological effects of VR environments on people, especially children, Meta has claimed that these new age requirements and parental controls, which include app-blocking and oversight on what their child is doing in VR, make it easier for parents to create and manage family accounts.

Parent-managed Meta Horizon profiles are automatically set to private in order to cut down on predatory behavior, and enforce age-checking processes for an extra layer of security.

Still, however, Meta has a history of allegedly violating its privacy promises, according to claims made by the Federal Trade Commission last year. The company, it said, profited off of data collected from young users on Instagram and Horizon Worlds.

By opening up largely untested VR experiences to younger users while depending on parental supervision to enforce preteen Quest use, and now one-on-one chatting, critics are concerned that Meta is bypassing child safety to attract more users, further develop CEO Mark Zuckerberg's long-term metaverse vision, and compete with more popular metaverse platforms like Roblox and Fortnite.

Meta has already been forced to make changes to Horizon Worlds to limit rampant harassment in the platform, such as adding personal boundaries for users' VR avatars. Horizon users have even been virtually raped in the VR environment.

Allowing preteens to enter a highly immersive digital landscape carries many risks, considering social media's proposed effects on the lives of young people.

“What we have seen is Meta, based solely on business imperatives, continually lowering the age of their virtual reality products and doing so without any evidence that these things are safe for young people,” Josh Golin, the executive director of Fairplay, a nonprofit children’s advocacy group, told The New York Times last year. “It's beyond the pale and clearly driven by the fact that they are trying to compete for a market, not driven by kids’ needs.”