We could be seeing a lot more pre-teens in the metaverse moving forward.
Last week Meta announced new parent-managed Meta accounts for families, allowing parents and guardians to better manage their children’s VR activities on Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest 3 headsets. The company also announced that it’s lowering the recommended age for VR users from 13 to 10, offering pre-teens official access to the metaverse.
Parents and guardians can now manage their family’s accounts on a single device. Account managers have the ability to control which apps can be downloaded from the Meta Quest Store. Once an account has been set up, Meta will only provide pre-teen users recommendations for age-appropriate games and apps.
Parents and guardians can block specific content at any time and schedule breaks from the device, allowing them more control over how much time their pre-teen spends in VR. By default, pre-teen accounts will be set to private. This means that parents need to approve who is allowed to follow their child. According to Meta, no ads are served to this age group.
“There’s a vast array of engaging and educational apps, games, and more across our platform, the majority of which are rated for ages 10 and up by both the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) and the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC),” said Meta in the official blog post.
“Parents and their preteens can enjoy interactive experiences from virtually visiting faraway places to seeing significant moments in history firsthand,” the company added.
“Families can explore the depths of the ocean, tour Machu Picchu, visit the International Space Station, orbit Jupiter, or simply play their favorite games. We’re working closely with our developer community over the coming months to bring even more age-appropriate apps and games onto the Meta Quest Platform for this age group to learn from and engage with.”
Long story short, we could be seeing a lot more children in the metaverse moving forward. That said, Horizon Worlds, Meta’s own social VR metaverse, will remain a 13+ app in the US and Canada and an 18+ app in Europe.
For more information on the new parent-managed Meta accounts for families check out Meta’s official blog post.
Feature Image Credit: Boumen Japet/Alamy Stock Photo
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