by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., Childrens Health Defense:
A group of 37 top children’s rights advocates told Mark Zuckerberg to stop targeting children and teens in the marketing scheme for “Horizon Worlds,” Meta’s virtual reality metaverse platform. Tech expert Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., told The Defender “Horizon Worlds” is even worse than the group described.
A group of nearly 70 “top children’s rights advocates and those promoting online privacy” last month told Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, to stop targeting children and teens in its marketing scheme for the company’s virtual reality (VR) metaverse platform, “Horizon Worlds.”
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The advocates — including Parents Television and Media Council and the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy — said in a letter to Zuckerberg:
“The undersigned — a total of 36 organizations and 37 individual experts on young people’s development — write to urge you to immediately cancel plans to lure users aged 13 to 17 to Horizon Worlds, and to prohibit minors from using the platform until Meta can demonstrate that engaging in such a continually evolving virtual reality (VR) environment is safe for their wellbeing.”
Citing the “well-documented negative impacts of 2D social media” on young people, the advocates said Meta “must wait for more peer-reviewed research” on the potential risks of the metaverse to ensure children’s and teens’ safety.
Commenting on the advocates’ letter, Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom,” agreed the metaverse poses a danger for children and teens.
“The metaverse is used to displace physical-world experience with a simulated reality,” Rectenwald said, “and, thanks to the reduced satisfactions of the real world, the metaverse has become preferable to non-virtual reality for many people. Meta’s ‘Horizon Worlds’ circumscribes the horizons of its young users and limits them to a simulacrum.”
Rectenwald told The Defender “Horizon Worlds’” potential harm to youth goes beyond what the advocates described in their letter. He said:
“The harms are more fundamental: that of consigning users to a consensual hallucination that replaces material reality and leads to the waste of human potential and the loss of real meaning.
“In lieu of reality, the metaverse delivers ontological bewilderment, identity transmutation and reality disfigurement. Zuckerberg’s Meta is the leading edge in making human beings into virtual zeros in the digital realm.”
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on May 3 accused Meta of violating its $5 billion privacy settlement and called for toughening up restrictions on the company, alleging the company improperly shared user data with third parties and failed to protect children as promised.
Moreover, the FTC said Meta should be banned from monetizing data it collects from younger users and should be barred from releasing any new products until a third-party auditor determines the company’s privacy policies do enough to protect users.
Metaverse is ‘endangering children’
According to the advocates, “Meta has invested heavily in ‘Horizon Worlds’ and it appears that Meta’s investment in VR is failing, and endangering children in the process.”
A recent study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that minors on Meta’s VR platform were “routinely exposed to harassment and abuse — including sexually explicit insults and racist, misogynistic, and homophobic harassment — and other offensive content.”
“Parents would be shocked to learn what’s going on behind the closed doors of ‘Horizon Worlds,’ where kids and teens are being assaulted with abusive conduct and harmful content, with no one to intervene,” the advocates said, adding:
“All of the harms associated with excessive use of social media and digital devices have the potential to be exacerbated on VR platforms.”
Although the CCDH reported 51 incidents of abusive behavior to Meta, the company provided no response and “no report of action taken or even acknowledgment of receipt of the complaints,” they said.
The CCDH also is the author of “The Disinformation Dozen,” which includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Children’s Health Defense chairman on leave.
Meta — which reported revenue of $28.1 billion in the first quarter of 2023 — is targeting teens to protect its bottom line by creating lifelong users who, by their presence and support, make the platform seem trendy.
The advocates pointed out that a memo leaked to The Wall Street Journal revealed Meta plans to open up “Horizon Worlds” to teens in order to drive profits.
In an internal memo cited by the WSJ, Horizon Worlds Vice President Gabriel Aul told staff that improving user retention among youth users was a top priority.
“But what may be good for your bottom line may be incredibly harmful to young people,” the advocates said.
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