The IET’s latest research shows that Generation Alpha is spending more time online than in the real world (and yes, as a GenX’er I had to look it up too – Gen A are born in the 21st century, mainly between 2010 and 2020) 

The IET study of 1,000 parents of children aged 5-13 found:

• 57% of children spend the majority of their recreational time online. 
• Children are spending the equivalent to a whole day online every week - 23 hours.
• Kids’ engagement with Virtual Reality has grown by 320% in the past year alone (63% in 2023 vs. 15% in 2022).

This boggles my mind – as a kid in the 1970’s it wasn’t unusual for me to be outside from breakfast until teatime – and my mum even had a hand bell she would ring to summon us in from the far playing fields. Now, I also realise that computers didn’t exist back then, so it wasn’t as if we had the same opportunities as young people today!

Don’t get me wrong, I may not be a digital native, but I’m no Luddite – I think VR and immersive environments are fantastic. The opportunities they give us to connect people, train people, innovate solutions are amazing – but there is danger there too and I think we are lagging behind in terms of safety in the virtual world, which means we are putting young people (in fact everyone) at risk.

In the IET research:

• Two thirds (64%) of parents feel that interacting with strangers online could desensitise their kids to real life dangers.
• Three quarters (76%) believe that tighter laws need to be introduced to protect individuals accessing immersive online experiences.

In mid-March 2023, the UK Government’s Online Safety Bill progressed to the House of Lords, yet a range of potential harms unique to the use of metaverse and VR remain un-covered by legislation. To ensure this technology can be enjoyed safely, the IET has been campaigning to future-proof the Bill. 

The IET policy team drafted an amendment to the legislation that would oblige Ofcom to review how the Act applies to the metaverse, and while our amendment didn’t get accepted verbatim it did lead to an extensive debate in the House of Lords, concluding with the Government offering assurances that Ofcom’s periodic reviews will likely include users’ experiences of services such as the metaverse.

 I can’t lie, it wasn’t until my team started this work that I put on a VR headset for the first time, and a bit like one of the virtual roller coasters it was a baptism of fire. In the course of our work, I have been lucky enough to see some of the very best that VR can offer, but also some of the really dark corners in these virtual worlds too. In online environments like VR Chat, research has shown that users are exposed to abusive behaviour every 7 minutes (source: Center for Countering Digital Hate).

There were dangers in the playing fields of my youth too – but they did not pop up every few minutes. In the UK we were warned via national campaigns, we were told how to avoid ‘stranger danger’, we looked out for each other, and we could often run away before they reached us. Very different to having harassment, pornography, abuse, and threats of violence sprung at you every few minutes when you are sitting at home, most people’s ‘place of safety’. 

The IET is continuing to push to ensure these reviews definitively include the metaverse and other emerging technologies – as well as calling on Ofcom to conduct a review on how the metaverse is governed. We want everyone to benefit from technology safely, but in my view, we have to get ahead of the curve with all this, we are already too far behind and if we don’t accelerate, we may never catch up.

So, what do you think, are we leaving kids unprotected and at risk from abuse in the virtual world? And if we are, what do we do about it?

Does the answer lie in greater legislation, putting more pressure on the platform providers, and ensuring that we can adequately punish abusers? Or could too much restriction hold back the spark of innovation? Should we educate Gen A better, arm them to protect themselves? Or am I being too cautious about all of this – should we just step back and let the wild west of the metaverse find its own level?