Won't somebody please think of the children? Well, if you spend any time in the metaverse, you won’t really have much of a choice.
Pop into a VR realm like Meta’s Horizon Worlds for even a moment, and an army of kids in their digital avatars will swarm all around you almost everywhere you go—waving, laughing, jumping, tossing digital objects, and shouting everything from high-pitched shrieks to straight up racial slurs.
That’s right, the metaverse is alive and, well … it’s populated primarily by children.
This won’t be a surprise to anyone who frequents social spaces online. Game platforms like Roblox and Fortnite are very popular with kids. Play a round of Call of Duty multiplayer and it might seem like every other voice you hear is a foul-mouthed kiddo with a gun. In a world full of digital natives, the young—abundant in neuroplasticity and free time—are usually the first to embrace nascent technologies. They pilot their avatars with microphones turned on by default, and it doesn’t take long for the interactions to start to feel like a brightly colored Lord of the Flies.
This cultural shift is only growing more acute as the prices of VR headsets continue to drop, making them more accessible to more families, and as the big platforms build out new content tiers to appeal to younger and younger audiences.
