Meta recently announced that it is opening Horizon Worlds, its social VR platform, to teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 in Canada and the United States in the coming weeks.
The press release was issued on Tuesday, April 18th, 2023. Meta Horizon Worlds had previously been limited to people aged 18 and older.
The announcement
According to Meta, virtual experiences are already garnering a lot of interest and popularity amongst teenagers throughout the industry.
Therefore, Meta said that they had decided to develop positive, safe and age-appropriate experiences for them in virtual reality.
It also added that they had improved the parental supervision tools in VR and they would now also be available for Meta Horizon Worlds.
This would ensure that guardians and parents are able to oversee the VR experiences of teenagers in more convenient ways.
The Horizon Worlds experience that Meta is planning to offer to teenagers comes with a comprehensive range of default safety measures and safeguards that have been especially developed by the company.
Meta further added that teenagers will have the freedom to determine who they wish to follow and who is allowed to follow them back.
It also stated that their profiles would be set to private by default, which would enable them to decline or approve any follow requests they get personally.
Other additions
There are other measures that Meta has also integrated. For instance, the location and active status of the teenagers in the Meta Horizon Worldswill also remain private from others using the platform.
Teenagers will have the ability to decide they want their online activity status to be visible to their connections or not.
Likewise, it will be up to them to disclose the public event or world they are currently in. The voice mode feature is the latest addition to be made to Horizon Worlds.
It can be used for voice modification of unknown individuals into friendly and soft tones, which would provide teenagers with more control over their communications.
Furthermore, it can be useful for teenagers who want to distort their voices, which means that unfamiliar individuals would not be able to hear it.
The voice mode for teens comes with garbled voices already enabled by default. Measures have also been implemented by Meta for preventing any interactions amongst adults and unrelated teens.
This means that teens will not see any adults in their list of ‘people you might know’ if they are not connected to them in any way.
A Family Center feature has also been added that can be used by parents for accessing supervision tips, tools, along with resources from experts.
They can also get information about online well-being and safety for supporting the experiences of their teen kids across Meta technologies.
Horizon Worlds
According to Meta, they are delivering an age-appropriate experience for teenagers in Horizon Worlds through the use of content ratings.
It said that teenagers would not be able to see, find or enter spaces that have mature content, thanks to the mature event and world ratings.
It asserted that its policies do not allow teenagers to publish mature events or worlds and any worlds that go against these policies would be removed right away.
It had been reported lasts year in October that Metaverse Horizon Worlds had been struggling to grab the attention of new users.
According to reports, most of those who visit Horizon Worlds do not return after the first month and since spring, there had been a steady decline in the user base.
Therefore, this seems like an attempt by Meta to expand the Horizon Worlds’ database. As long as it plays its cards right, its goal to attract teenagers could undoubtedly turn into a lucrative opportunity.
Meta said that it would roll out to teenagers slowly and use a phased approach in order to examine usage carefully before they go for a broader expansion.
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