Despite the endless amounts of opportunity and new horizons for dating that Virtual Reality brings, there are some serious concerns for safety within the metaverse.
Douglas Zytko, Assistant Professor at Oakland University, is at the forefront of this concern and is currently conducting research about online-to-offline harm.
“With all the richer interaction capabilities comes the capacity for rich forms of harm and harassment; we’re talking verbal harassment where people say things that a very rude or graphic, we’re talking physical harassment between avatars and even environmental harassment through drawing phallic imagery or showing a video or picture which someone is uncomfortable with.
“Another concern is consent, which for me is the most essential element of VR dating. For it to be successful, consent needs to be foregrounded in all interactions to prevent harm and ensure interactions that users are having are mutually beneficial because some people might be going into these virtual worlds expecting some kind of sexually charged interaction.
Douglas Zytko (right) with his pupils at Oakland University
“If we don’t foster these consensual behaviors into our technologies they could then transfer over into our behavior as real humans.
“Despite all of this, I’m not really seeing an emphasis on safety from these companies that design this technology. In their marketing and in their promotional content, there is no mention of how they are going to protect the user, they just focus on the opportunity of this content first, and that’s an issue.
“It’s an issue because there are marginalized groups, who are already witnessing a lot of harm in more traditional mobile dating, seeing this new technology and thinking ‘great, another opportunity to be hurt’ so for VR to work, it needs to cater to all these demographics.