Meta to introduce parental controls for Quest VR

[Daniel Sims]

In brief: This week, Meta announced a set of new parental controls it's bringing to Quest VR headsets over the next few months. These will allow parents to monitor and control what Quest apps their kids use. This comes after Meta introduced other new safety features in its VR applications in response to sexual harassment complaints.

Meta has revealed three new features it's working on to make parents feel safer about what their teens -- the company maintains that users must be 13 and older to use its products -- are using their Quest VR headsets for. It promises this is only the beginning of its work on parental controls.

Starting in April, Quest owners will be able to lock individual apps behind an unlock pattern if they find them inappropriate for younger users. Currently they can only lock the entire headset behind that feature.

Later, in May, Meta will start to automatically block younger users from apps based on their age ratings. Parents will be able to unlock individual apps if they're fine with their kids accessing them.

Around that time, the company will also launch a parent dashboard on the Oculus mobile app, which will include various functions to give parents more control over what their teens access.

The app will let parents view what their teens download, approve or deny all downloads, view a teen's friend list, block specific apps, monitor a teen's screen time, and block a teen from linking the Quest to a PC. More features are to come in the future.

The VR parental controls are just one part of a new "Family Center" Meta unveiled this week which includes parental controls for Instagram as well as an information hub for parents.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/93813-meta-introduce-parental-controls-quest-vr.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

The funny thing about parent controls are that most parents nowadays are so inept, they need to rely on their children to actually set them.

I'm 40 years old.

I purposefully turned on the censorship controls on my parents cable box for anything higher than R-rated because I really don't feel they should be watching that kind of stuff.

 

[Uncle Al]

At 66 and watching the trash that they allow through it strongly suggests we need both Parent Controls and Meta Controls ...... ASAP!

 

[George Keech]

I just want every news outlet to stop calling them Meta. Its Facebook, you know that scummy company no one likes.

I know its technically their name but its no annoying

 

[gdavid65]

How the hell haven't they been banned from their goal of ruling VR altogether?

Whatsapp.. Instagram... Oculous... "Metaverse" rolling next.

No eyebrows were raised about anti-competitiveness during the earlier acquisitions.. yet a few years later everybody is saying "why do they have so much influence in our everyday lives?".

Well the time is very much right now to stomp these grubs back into the earth when it comes to VR before it is too late.

Thankfully their currency/crypto attempts were squashed well and truly into the ground before they got a foothold in that space.

 

[wiyosaya]

Maybe they should market it as "Nanny Vision".

 

[Neatfeatguy]

As long as they don't F up parental control like MS did, it could be a welcomed addition to their VR for parents that care about these things.

I liked how parental controls functioned on Windows 7. Controls were on the computer/device. You managed things there. Create an account for the kids, setup the parental controls and done!

Windows 10 (not sure how it worked on 8/8.1, never used that OS) is absolutely trash. You have to run parental controls through your MS account and try to link other accounts to your's and all changes are made online and can only be adjusted/maintained online. Nothing is handled on the actual computer/device..... I couldn't get accounts to link to mine when I tried to set them up. Multiple times across multiple devices and nothing would link and work. What an absolutely cluster F of a system that MS has for parental controls. What a joke.

Even Apple devices have parental controls you can setup to lock things down on the devices. I actually like the fact that I can block youtube on their ipads, no problems. Want to block tiktok? Done. Set up blocks on the ipad, lock it with a password and they can't access those things that are blocked. I don't like Apple, but at least they got this right.

Want to block something on your kid's windows account? Okay. Log into your MS account online and configure things and hope that the changes take...not to mention you always need internet access to make parental changes or the fact that you need to be able to successfully link a kid's MS account to yours....I hate MS's parental account controls. Not everything needs to be linked to their stupid f'ing servers.

 

[RudyBob]

Parents won't control the little buggers...someone has to

 

[QuantumPhysics]

How the hell haven't they been banned from their goal of ruling VR altogether?

Whatsapp.. Instagram... Oculous... "Metaverse" rolling next.

No eyebrows were raised about anti-competitiveness during the earlier acquisitions.. yet a few years later everybody is saying "why do they have so much influence in our everyday lives?".

Well the time is very much right now to stomp these grubs back into the earth when it comes to VR before it is too late.

Thankfully their currency/crypto attempts were squashed well and truly into the ground before they got a foothold in that space.

Any VR headset maker can create their own VR utopia and use their own currency.

Facebook/ Oculus isn't the end all.

 

[wizardB]

Just shut facebook and all that crap off and send your children out into the world.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Just shut facebook and all that crap off and send your children out into the world.

Comment of the decade!

 

[Avro Arrow]

If it needs parental controls, it just suddenly became more interesting to me!

 

[Aaron Fox]

The article pic is stomach churning. If Facebook's avatars look like that I won't be touching it even if paid to do so. Horrendous.