‘Child Flag’ System Needed To Protect Teens From AR/VR: Report

A system that “flags” kids attempting to access age-restricted augmented and virtual reality content should be imposed on online platforms and device makers, according to a report released this month by a Washington, D.C. technology think tank.

Congress should require that device makers and online platforms hosting age-restricted content establish a “child flag” system that allows platforms to safely assume everyone is an adult unless they have been marked as a child, asserted the report by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

Device makers should have to build the child flag system into their operating systems’ parental controls, it continued, and apps and websites that serve age-restricted content should have to check for its signal before serving their content.

The report added that policymakers’ current approach of mostly focusing on establishing ID-based age-verification mandates is unlikely to make teens safe and would make the online experience worse overall for both teens and adults.

Moreover, they could erode users’ privacy, chill free speech, and stifle the development of the metaverse and AR/VR technology.

Mark N. Vena, president and principal analyst with SmartTech Research in San Jose, Calif., recommended AR/VR stakeholders take more interest in self-regulating themselves.

He asserts that companies need to commit themselves to managing the content in a more controllable way. If they don’t do it, the only other choice you have is legislation, and every time that happens, it has a negative impact.

It’s unlikely that a single solution will address all the potential problems arising from AR/VR, added Tuong Nguyen, a director analyst and member of the emerging technologies and trends team at Gartner.

“We should also keep in mind that head-mounted devices are just an end-point computing device and that AR and VR are experiences. Therefore, whatever system is in place needs to address end-point computing devices more broadly — phones, tablets, other types of displays — as well as the impact of the experience type — AR, VR, or otherwise.”

Yaron Litwin, CMO of Canopy, a maker of software and tools to monitor children’s devices and online activity, agreed. Teens may be more susceptible to AR/VR-associated threats because their still-developing brains impact their decision-making, impulsiveness, and risk assessment. This can render them more vulnerable to threats associated with AR/VR, including privacy issues, explicit content, and addictiveness, he said.

AR/VR is going to have tremendous societal impact because there’s going to be a lot of children that use these products, and with the wrong material, it could have a devastating negative effect, according to Vena.

The ITIF report includes a laundry list of threats AR/VR poses to both adults and teens. Threats unique to teens include sexual predation, cyberbullying, virtual harassment, exposure to inappropriate content, unhealthy overuse of technology, and gambling addiction.