Meta thinks it’s a good idea for students to wear Quest headsets in class

Meta continues to face criticism over how it handles younger consumers using its platforms, but the company is also planning new products that will meet their needs. On Monday, the company announced that it will launch a new education product for Quest later this year to position its VR headset as a must-have device for classroom teaching.

The product hasn’t yet been named, but in a blog post describing it, Nick Clegg, the company’s president of global affairs — the former politician turned Meta executive most likely to deliver messages on topics more controversial and controversial – said that it will include a hub for education-specific apps and features, as well as the ability to manage multiple headsets at once without having to update each device individually.

Business models for hardware and services also need to be defined. With nothing on the table, the company presents it as a long-term bet.

“We accept that it’s going to take a long time and we’re not going to make any money anytime soon,” Clegg said in an interview with Axios.

On the plus side, a push toward education could mean more diverse content for Quest users, as well as a broader ecosystem of developers building for the platform — not the killer app that critics say is missing still virtual reality, but at least more action.

On more problematic ground, the news follows some other less positive developments within the company. WhatsApp, Meta’s instant messaging service, has caused a lot of concern because it is lowering the minimum age of users to 13 in the United Kingdom and the European Union (from 16).

Monday’s announcement comes on the heels of Meta’s announcement asking Quest users to confirm their age so it can provide age-appropriate experiences for teens and tweens.

The new initiative will roll out later this year and will only be available to institutions serving students aged 13 and over. Meta said it will launch it first in the 20 markets where it already supports Quest for Business, Meta’s $14.99/month subscription focused on the workplace. This list includes the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and several other English-speaking markets, as well as Japan and much of Western Europe.

There are already a number of companies in the market exploring the idea of ​​virtual reality in the classroom, with names like ImmersionVR, ClassVR and ArborVR, not to mention Microsoft, which has been offering its HoloLens as an educational tool for some time Already. .

It’s unclear how pervasive the use of virtual reality is in schools: One vendor, ClassVR, says 40,000 classrooms worldwide use its products.

But there are still obstacles to mass market use. It’s unclear, for example, whether strapping a headset to someone’s face is necessarily helpful in a live educational environment, given some research on the topic. young people are already receiving too much time spent in front of a screen as is.

And another big question mark will be the cost of purchasing headsets – Quest 3s, the latest headsets, start at around $500 a piece for base models – purchasing apps and then supporting any this infrastructure. Meta said it was already done donate Quest is aimed at 15 universities in the United States, but it’s unclear how far it will go to subsidize long-term growth.