Metaverse sounds like a good thing toward the next level of social technology. It has its advantages, ranging from concerts, education, traveling, events and conferences. It saves money, gas, and time from going from one destination to another. Then again, the metaverse also has its own problems that need to be addressed.
A researcher’s experience of using Zuckerberg’s metaverse app, which is confined not only to gaming, but also to other areas. The minimum age to use the app is 13, and there is no age verification check. She registered as a 13-year old and entered into VR chat rooms, ranging from restaurants, pole-dancing, and strip clubs. There, she was exposed to sexual materials and activities that led to rape threats.
One man told her that they could get up and talk about all kinds of nudity and erotic activities. Catherine Allen, founder of Limina Immersive, found the details of the apps “disturbing” and described a virtual reality incident of a seven-year-old girl using the Meta-owned app. She and another child were surrounded by men who joked about raping them. A safety campaigner, who remained anonymous for the concern of his family’s safety, has spoken to children in the apps. They told him they were groomed and forced to perform sexual activities. He also added, “The safety campaigner explained that because virtual reality is so immersive, children actually have to act out sexual movements.”
The Children’s Commissioner for England and the NSPCC urged tech companies to improve online safety for minors. Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, criticized Meta for not providing online safety for minors. She continued to push the tech companies for age verification to protect children from exposure to X-rated experiences rather than child-friendly experiences.
Children were subjected to inappropriate activities, according to Andy Burrows, the NSPCC’s head of online safety policy. He also added that products were being rolled out without regard to safety, which is dangerous. It affects their beliefs, values, and attitudes about sexual health practices and images, as well as how they view their sexual partner in the long run.
The link between pornography and objectification has an emotional impact, and it affects society as a whole. An article titled “How Porn Can Normalize Sexual Objectification” from Fight the New Drug reported research on sexual objectification performed by Princeton and Stanford psychologists. Its purpose was to see how the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of the brain responds when recognizing human faces and to see the differences in others. Pictures of women who were fully clothed and women who were less clothed and had been sexualized were shown to a group of men.
When men saw pictures of women fully clothed, the mPFC part of the brain was activated, but not when they saw pictures of sexualized women who were less clothed. This suggests that they see women fully clothed as fully human but not as sexualized women. Instead, they view them as objects. Other experts summarized the negative influence of pornography on various aspects of health, from mental health to physical health.
Another study shows how children are experiencing life in the virtual world as if it were real. Jeremy Bailenson, the director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, was conducting a study in 2009. Its purpose was to focus on how well children remembered their experience in VR. A group of kids with VR helmets were experiencing an ecological community below the surface of the water. A week later, they still remembered their experience as if it had been a real-life experience in the real world.
VR does not exempt children from having a negative outcome when they are exposed to pornographic materials. In the long run, it still has an effect on their thoughts and actions in the same way as in the real world. VR is not far away from merging into the physical world. That means the real-life experience may be similar to the real-life experience even though their physical bodies are still intact in the real world, which can be dangerous. It can give a false sense of reality and the lack of understanding the real consequences when given a disoriented experience. On the other hand, the metaverse benefits others in a positive way if it is used for good and not for evil. Make allowance for Romans 12:2. It says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may demonstrate what God’s good, acceptable, and perfect will is.”
