Several advocacy and safety groups have written to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, urging the company to abandon its plans to allow children access to the metaverse.
The letter, signed by major safety organizations including Airplay, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, and Common Sense Media, among others, asks Meta to reconsider its plans to market its metaverse app, Horizon Worlds, to children and teenagers.
Meta plans to promote its metaverse app, Horizon Worlds, to young people and teenagers in the coming months. However, the organizations and professionals who signed the letter argue that children and young adults will likely face harassment and privacy violations on the virtual reality platform.
They also suggested that Meta should first assess the risks associated with children and teenagers accessing the metaverse and wait for more peer-reviewed studies on the potential risks of the platform to ensure their safety.
The campaigners cited a March 2023 research report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which found that adults had already been harassing individuals under the age of 18 on the Horizon Worlds app. The study revealed that during 100 visits to the most popular worlds in Horizon Universe, there were 19 instances of adult sexual harassment and abuse of minors.
Despite making Horizon Worlds available to users aged 18 and above in 2021, Meta has struggled to retain them on the platform. According to a Wall Street Journal report from October 2022, Meta lowered its target for 280,000 monthly active users by the end of the year from 500,000, and most users stopped using the platform after a month. Even the creators of the service do not frequently use it themselves.
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