Meta has faced criticism for how it handles its young consumers on its platform, but the company is also planning to roll out new products to cater to their needs. This Monday, the company announced plans to launch a new educational product for its Quest headset later this year, positioning its VR headset as a useful tool for classroom instruction.
The product is yet to be named, but the company's Global Affairs President, Nick Clegg, who has transitioned from politics to a leadership role at Meta, is most likely to share information on more controversial and divisive topics. In a blog post describing the product, he mentioned it will feature a hub for educational applications and functionalities, along with the ability to manage multiple headsets simultaneously without the need to update each device individually.
The commercial model for Quest headset hardware and services remains unclear, with the company treating it as a long-term bet in the absence of any immediate progress. Clegg acknowledged this in an interview with Axios, stating, "We recognize this is going to take a long time, and we're not going to make money on it quickly."
On the bright side, the push towards the education sector could mean Quest users gain access to a more diverse range of content and foster a broader developer ecosystem for the platform, though critics argue that VR still lacks killer apps, at least with more action on the horizon.
More worrisome are some less positive developments preceding this announcement. Meta's messaging service WhatsApp has come under scrutiny for lowering the minimum age for users in the UK and EU to 13 (previously 16). Following Meta's prompt for Quest users to confirm their age for appropriate teen experiences, Meta announced this on Monday.
This new initiative is set to launch later this year and will be aimed exclusively at institutions with students aged 13 and above. Meta stated it would roll out the service first in the 20 markets already supporting Quest for Business, Meta's workplace-focused $14.99/month subscription service. These markets include the US, Canada, the UK, several other English-speaking markets, as well as most of Japan and Western Europe.
Many companies in the market are already exploring the idea of using VR in classrooms, such as ImmersionVR, ClassVR, and ArborVR, not to mention giants like Microsoft, which has been promoting HoloLens as an educational tool for some time.
The extent of VR's penetration into schools is still unclear: one supplier, ClassVR, claims 40,000 classrooms worldwide are using its product.
Nevertheless, there are still barriers to mainstream adoption. For instance, it's unclear whether strapping a headset to someone's face necessarily aids in an in-person educational environment, given some research suggesting young people already have too much screen time.
Another major issue is the cost of purchasing headsets (Quest 3 being the latest, with a starting price of around $500 for the base model) and the subsequent cost of buying applications and supporting all the infrastructure. Meta has donated Quest headsets to 15 universities in the US, but it's currently unclear to what extent they will subsidize long-term development.
