Meta is still getting bad feedback about how it treats young people who use its platforms, but the company is also working on new goods that will appeal to them. In a blog post on Monday, the company said that later this year, it will release a new education product for Quest that will make its VR gear the best tool for teaching in schools.
Nick Clegg, the company’s president of global affairs and a former politician who is now Meta’s executive, said in a blog post about the product that it will have a hub for education-specific apps and features as well as the ability to manage multiple headsets at once without having to update each one separately.
There are also still no clear business plans for products and services. Since the business has nothing to lose, it sees it as a long-term bet.
In an interview with Axios, Clegg said, “We know it will take a long time, and we won’t be making any money from this for a while.”
Plus, a focus on education could lead to a wider range of material for Quest users, as well as more developers creating games for the platform. This might not be the “killer app” that VR critics say it still lacks, but it would at least mean more action.
The news comes after some other less-good events at the company, which is a problem. Meta’s messaging app WhatsApp has been getting a lot of bad press since it lowered the age limit for users in the EU and the UK to 13. It used to be 16.
Meta recently asked Quest users to confirm their age so that it could give teens and preteens suitable experiences. Monday’s news comes right after that.
After the end of this year, the new program will begin to be used by schools with kids 13 years of age or older. Meta said it will get it out first in the 20 markets where it already offers Quest for Business, Meta’s $14.99-a-month subscription service for businesses. The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and a number of other English-speaking areas are on that list. Japan and most of western Europe are also on the list.
Several companies, such as Immersion VR, ClassVR, and ArborVR, are already looking into the use of VR in the classroom. Microsoft, for example, has been marketing HoloLens as a teaching tool for a while now.
It’s not clear how common VR use is in schools. 40,000 classes worldwide use the products of one company, ClassVR.
However, there are still issues that hinder the mass market’s adoption. Some studies show that young people already spend too much time in front of screens, so it’s not clear if putting a headset on someone’s head would help in a real-life classroom setting.
Another big question mark is how much it will cost to buy headsets (the newest one, the Quest 3, starts at about $500 for a basic model), apps, and then keep all of that infrastructure running. Meta has already provided free glasses to 15 colleges in the United States Quest, but it’s not clear how far it will go to support long-term growth.
