The Quest VR virtual reality headset had launched back in 2019 to a lot of hype. Three years after the release, parent company Meta is taking the steps needed to roll out parental supervision tools in its headset.
Quest VR has been a part of Meta’s arsenal before its rebranding from Facebook last year. A large part of the rebranding process was centred around diversifying the brand’s efforts in the domain of immersive technologies. However, the journey has not been free from hurdles, due to regulatory demands for safety. There has been a demand for parental supervision systems to create a safer platform for children.
Quest 2 saw healthy sales during the 2021 holiday period following Christmas Day. According to estimates, the mobile companion application of Oculus Quest got approximately two million downloads. This was largely positive, but also exposed the huge need for implementing parental control systems into the headset. There have also been cases of government authorities raising their voice against the possible violation of safety for children.
At present, Quest headsets enable users to configure unlock patterns such as passcodes for controlling device accesses. Meta is set to enhance the functionality of its parental control and security features. If this is implemented, parents will get the ability to restrict their children from accessing particular games or putting some apps behind code protection. These are considerable changes for the ecosystem and can beef up the level of child safety.
In the near future, Meta also aims to introduce a new feature that can put an automatic block on teenagers who try to download applications that are to mature for them. Since Quest profiles are linked to the Facebook accounts of users through IARC. It is capable of detecting the age of individuals, but there is not much that could become when a child uses their parent’s ID.
Meta is in the process of creating various parental control features for the Quest, and updates regarding those are expected in the near future. With the new versions of the Oculus mobile applications, parents can gain access to a Parent Dashboard which lets them establish a link with the account of their child.
Meta has also launched a Family Center for providing easy access to resources and digital tools.
According to a blog post from Meta, once a login or content access attempt is made by a teenager, both them and their parent have to provide the approval for it to be unlocked.
Including all the virtual reality-based tools within a mobile application can be quite convenient for parents, who can control applications with their headsets. Utilising the dashboard parents are able to easily monitor and regulate what apps can be downloaded by their child. This is made possible in accordance with the ratings of these apps. With the new features, children can only download and use applications with the appropriate ratings.
Parents do have the luxury of choosing to pre-approve some applications for their kids.
