Until now, Meta Horizon Worlds is limited to those 18 and up. Yesterday, Meta announced that it is opening up Horizon Worlds to teens (aged 13 to 17) in the US and Canada. To protect the teens, Meta has developed age-appropriate protections and safety defaults. Some of the safety features are listed below.
- Meta Horizon profile privacy settings: Teens are in control of who they follow and who can follow them back. Teens’ profiles are automatically set to private, so they’re able to approve or decline anyone who requests to follow them.
- Active status settings: By default, we won’t show a teen’s active status and Meta Horizon Worlds location to other people in Worlds. Teens will be able to choose whether their connections can see if they’re active online and which public world or event they’re in.
- World and event content ratings: We use content ratings to ensure teens have an age-appropriate experience within Worlds. For example, mature world and event ratings prevent teens from finding, seeing, or entering spaces that contain mature content. Our policies prohibit teens from publishing mature worlds or events. Worlds violating this policy will be removed.
- Voice mode: This feature transforms the voices of people a teen doesn’t know into quiet, friendly sounds, giving teens more control over who can communicate with them. It also garbles the teen’s voice, so people they don’t know can’t hear them. We turn garbled voices on automatically for all teens by default within voice mode.
- Limiting interactions between teens + adults they don’t know: We want to help prevent teens from hearing from adults they may not know. That’s why we take steps to prevent interactions between adults and unconnected teens. For example, we don’t display any adults a teen doesn’t know in their “people you might know” list.
In addition to the above, teens will also have access to additional Horizon Worlds safety tools, including safe zone and personal boundary.
Also, parents of the teens can do the following:
- See, adjust, and lock safety features like voice mode and personal boundary for their teen.
- See who their teen follows and who follows their teen.
- See which apps their teen has used and how much time they’ve spent in Meta Quest and Worlds in the past seven days.
- Give permission to allow or block their teen from using apps, including Worlds.
- Access resources about our available safety features.
Meta has also developed educational safety tips into the Worlds experience specifically for teens to remind them of safety best practices.
