Sure, it all happened in VR. But for Roach — who spotted this gory scene while monitoring his son’s VR gaming on a computer screen that mirrored what Peyton was doing with an Oculus Quest 2 headset — it felt uncomfortably real.
Roach knew when Peyton looked down in VR he was seeing a weapon held in virtual hands, not just a plastic game controller. It didn’t matter that it was a single-player game, which meant that the characters weren’t represented by other human players.
“It bothered me in a way it doesn’t on flat screens even, because they’re doing it with their hands in physical presence,” he said.
Roach, who lives in Kansas City, Missouri and works as community manager for VR-based learning platform Edstutia, sat down with Peyton at the time and talked about what had happened. He also stopped letting his three oldest children (Peyton, now 12, and his 11- and 14-year-old brothers) play that game.
Roach is one of a growing number of parents navigating a new frontier in technology, and learning as they go. More kids have access to VR headsets than ever before — and with it, access to a still-niche but expanding virtual world of games, avatar-driven hangouts, and many more activities. And the number of kids who use it is only likely to increase after the most recent holiday season.
While the headsets are popping up in more homes, several models, including the Quest 2, lack established parental controls like time limits and maturing settings for profiles that you can find on a traditional video game console or a service like Netflix.
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