My family has a new toy. At every gathering, a Meta Quest 2 virtual reality headset is now carefully unpacked and passed around. It is so popular that my nephews start begging to see it as soon as they arrive.
Their reaction is understandable. The metaverse that Oculus headsets access sounds like an alluring place. Create your own form, flit between worlds and exceed the limitations of reality — what could be better? If the possibilities are endless, who wouldn’t want to disappear into a digital universe? Yet the headsets are still bulky and the apps cartoonish. Even the game my family loves best, an atmospheric puzzle set in Edwardian London called The Room, shows that seamless interaction with the real world and realistic graphics are years away. After an hour, not even my nephews want to play any more.
My experiences so far suggest that we’re still a very long way from having to worry about spending too much time in thrall to the metaverse. Yet this observation runs counter to the steady drumbeat of warnings that have emerged about virtual life over the past year. When Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen spoke out against her employer, addiction to the metaverse was one of the things she claimed to be most worried about. Immersive environments would encourage users to unplug from reality altogether, she said.