VR worlds are no better or worse than anywhere else online

Until 2019, virtual reality was an absolute faff to use. It was expensive and tethered by cables to expensive PCs, but the wireless and easy-to-use Oculus Quest has changed that. Once the headset is on you can browse from a few hundred apps and games designed for VR, many of which are social spaces designed for chatting to other people. VRChat is one of several, and the most popular, partly because it is intriguingly wild and random.

Given how endemic toxicity is online, from Twitter to Facebook to Call of Duty, I do not have high confidence that Meta or indeed anyone in the big tech world has either the will or the means to make the online world universally pleasant and safe. In this way, VR worlds are no better or worse than anywhere else online.

Bearing in mind that like social media, VR headsets are not intended for users under 13, the best we can do at the moment is equip teens to deal with it.