When it comes to child supervision in the tech world, it is an agenda that continues to flare up with government scrutiny. Reportedly, Congress is flooded with bills that seek to strengthen the regulators, along with banning kids under the age of 13 completely from social media. Meanwhile, Meta announced certain changes that would reportedly give families more ways to enjoy the Meta Quest. According to a blog post by Meta, parents will be able to set up accounts for Meta Quest 2 and Quest 3 for their children in the age group of 10–12.
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As per the post, Meta plans on making it simpler for parents to create and manage all of their family members’ accounts on a single device with new parent-managed Meta accounts. The tech company plans on making it necessary for preteens to obtain parental consent before creating an account, allowing parents to supervise the apps their preteens download from the app store. When parents provide their child’s age, the platform will use the data to deliver experiences that are age-appropriate across our app store. For instance, the platform may recommend only age-appropriate apps.
The majority of the apps, games, and other content available on the platform are rated for users 10 and older by the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) and the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), respectively. Children, along with their parents, can engage in interactive activities that range from virtually travelling to distant locations to really witnessing key historical events. As Meta claims, families will be able to go on underwater adventures, travel to space, or just enjoy playing their favourite games.
Meta plans to collaborate closely with the developer community to provide more age-appropriate apps and games to the Meta Quest Platform for this age range over the coming months.
What’s more, the parent-managed accounts, that will reportedly be available later this year will include certain features. One of them is the Mandatory parental approval. Parents will have to create an account for their kids who fall into the age group of 10–12. Children cannot create an account without their parents’ permission.
Further, another feature is the Parent-managed access to content. Parents will be in charge of deciding whether or not their children download and use applications, and they can stop access to apps at any moment. All apps on the Meta Quest Platform will have a product description page that provides details on what data is collected and how it might be used, whether the app has social features, and an age rating provided by the IARC, an independent global agency, to assist parents in deciding whether to permit their children to use an app.
Moreover, the Time limit controls and casting will allow the parents to have control over how long their child can use the headset each day and can set aside time for them to unplug from it. Meta also plans to provide the option for parents to watch what their children are viewing while using the headgear by casting VR experiences to a phone or TV screen.
When it comes to privacy and safety, nobody will be able to follow the children without their or their parent’s consent because parent-managed Meta Horizon profiles will be automatically set to private. Children in the age group of 10–12 will by default have their active status and recent app activity hidden from others unless their parent chooses to enable this information to be shared. Only a parent will be able to change the default privacy and safety settings for preteens.
Meta also plans to provide an appropriate experience. They plan on using the data collected from the age group of 10–12 from the Meta Quest products. Additionally, parents will have the option to cancel their child’s account, along with all of the data linked to it, and to decide whether or not their child’s data will be utilised to enhance the user experience.
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In May, with various degrees of support from colleagues, civil rights organisations, and tech trade associations alike, lawmakers and regulators launched a new campaign to tighten privacy and safety safeguards for children online. The sudden flurry of activity follows a long-standing teenage mental health crisis that all parties involved seem to want to address, but many were concerned that the suggestions could lead to new issues for kids and members of marginalised communities online.