Social networking company Meta is facing backlash over its plans to market and offer its flagship Metaverse app, Horizon Worlds, to teens. Democratic Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal directed a letter to the company to cease these activities, citing concerns about teens’ interactions in Meta’s virtual worlds.
Metaverse Opposes Plan to Adopt Teenagers
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Two Democratic Senators have drafted a letter urging Meta to halt its recently reported plan to open the Metaverse world to teenagers. Democratic Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal of Massachusetts and Connecticut, respectively, criticized the idea of opening Meta’s flagship Metaverse app, Horizon Worlds, to teens over the age of 13 and the interactions available in this virtual world He cites the diverse elements that might put them at risk through the
The letter distinguishes between standard virtual reality experiences and Horizon Worlds,noting that “the cumulative set of immersive virtual reality experiences that teens face in socially-driven Horizon Worlds, such as a particular single-player game,” explaining that “this is different from using a virtual reality headset to play a game”. Thus, inviting teenagers into such an environment poses serious risks.
Markey and Blumenthal call the company out on its past failures regarding this demographic, asking that the plan be dropped to protect the health of these young users and their privacy in the metaverse.
Meta’s Teenager Adoption Push
The Wall Street Journalreportedon Meta’s plan to include teenagers in the Metaverse on February 7. According to an internal memo obtained by the Journal, the company’s new strategy included opening the Horizon Worlds experience to teens ages 13 and older. This would be a change from the app’s current policy, which only allows users over the age of 18 to roam the virtual world.
According to the WSJ, Meta’s memo reinforces the need to push these services to younger users in order to continue to grow; Gabriel Aul, VP of Horizon Worlds, is quoted as saying, “We’ve been working with Meta for a while now, and we’ve been working with them for a while.
Today, competitors are doing a better job of meeting the unique needs of these cohorts, and for Horizon to be successful, first and foremost, we need to ensure that we are serving this cohort.
Horizon Worlds has experienced rapid growth in its early stages, increasing its user base tenfold soon after its December 2021 release, but the app has also been criticized by Meta employees for being buggy; in October, Vishal Shah, Vice President of Metaverse, said that admitted that the problems present in the app hamper the user experience and that even the company’s employees do not spend much time using it.
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