Welcoming Preteens to Meta Horizon Worlds
Preteens can now request access to Meta Horizon Worlds in the US and Canada, and this functionality is coming soon to all countries where Worlds is available. For more information on default protections and age-appropriate settings that parents can further customize, please visit our Family Center.
Parents who have approved access to a managed Meta account for their preteens will soon have the opportunity to also approve access to specific experiences in Meta Horizon Worlds.
We recently started giving parents the ability to approve individual contacts that their preteens can then chat with, call, and invite/accept invites to join them in parent-approved experiences across the Meta Horizon ecosystem. Looking ahead, we’ll give parents the option to approve access to specific experiences within Meta Horizon Worlds, opening up new ... well, worlds of possibility for preteens to explore and enjoy in the coming months.
Once a preteen requests access to Horizon Worlds, a parent will approve and specify the worlds their preteen can access. Preteens can then learn and play in worlds like The Space Station and The Aquarium—or collaborate and move with parent-approved friends and family in more active worlds like Citadel, Spy School, Bobber Bay Fishing, and more. Worlds can offer preteens access to a variety of fun, engaging and age-appropriate places to hang out with friends and family—no matter where they happen to be, both in-headset and on mobile. And as we open up preteen access to worlds (with parental permission, of course), we’ll encourage creators to build even more age-appropriate and enriching experiences.
All of this is made possible by parent-managed Meta accounts, which we rolled out in September 2023 to enable children ages 10 – 12 to safely experience age-appropriate content. With default protections for preteens alongside parental setup and approval, this was an important step in making Meta Horizon more accessible while helping to keep families safe. To help ensure everyone is in the right account for their age, we asked people who use a Meta Quest 2 or 3 headset to re-enter their birth date.
Here’s how it’ll work:
We’re rolling out a new rating system exclusively for Horizon Worlds—ages 10+, ages 13+, and ages 18+ (age may vary by region)—to quickly signal to parents which worlds are appropriate and make it easier for parents to supervise which worlds their preteen can access.
A parent-managed Meta account holder must request access to Horizon Worlds. Once a parent lets their preteen access Horizon Worlds, their preteen will be able to request access to individual worlds, or parents can approve worlds at certain ratings in bulk (for example, a parent can approve their preteen to access to all 10+ rated worlds). As with 13- to 17-year-olds, 18+ worlds are not visible or available to preteens with a parent-managed account.
We’ve also built in a number of default protections and age-appropriate settings that parents can further customize. For example, voice chat is disabled for parent-managed Meta account users in Horizon Worlds except for specific parent-approved contacts.
As our focus is facilitating connections between preteens and their family and friends, we don’t recommend people to follow for this age group.
Preteens’ status and visibility settings will be set to show as “offline” to others by default—and only parents can change this setting.
Personal boundary will prevent anyone from getting too close to the avatar of anyone with a parent-managed Meta account, and this setting can’t be changed.
We collaborated with third-party organizations and advisors, parents, and families, to help shape the preteen experience within Horizon Worlds through our co-design work, and our Trust, Transparency, and Control (TTC) Labs team published a report that shares details of what we learned. Consistent with our approach to expanding to teens, we’re also rolling out parent-managed Meta accounts over time, starting with the US and Canada, so that we can evaluate preteen and parent usage by taking a phased approach before expanding more broadly.
Connecting with friends is part of what makes Meta Horizon great, and we’re excited to give preteens access to even more age-appropriate social experiences, managed by their parents.