Meta's Quest Headsets Don't Belong in Our Kids' Schools

We must not sanction Meta's disregard for our children’s well-being by welcoming their products into classrooms.

I recently learned that May is also known as “Mayhem” among some parents of school-aged kids, and now that my kids are getting a bit older, I can see why. With end-of-year field trips, spring and summer sports starting up, and much more, I’m glad for the extra hours of sunlight that the northern hemisphere enjoys this time of year. I’m also very thankful that this run-of-the-mill busyness is nothing compared to the actual mayhem that we all experienced in 2020 — but of course, we can’t fully “return to normal,” and in some ways, the challenges we still need to grapple with are clearer than ever. That’s why this edition of Digital with Discernment is focused on helping you carefully evaluate another new technology that could be coming to our children’s classrooms as soon as this fall, and empowering you to take action accordingly.

You don’t need to be a parent or educator to know that children’s lives have been turned upside down in the last several years. The COVID-19 pandemic launched digital technology into an even more prominent position in kids’ lives almost overnight, and we still don’t fully understand the enormous, detrimental impact that pandemic-related school closures and other measures had on kids — but we do know that children around the world are struggling academically, socially, and emotionally. And yet, in the midst of all of this upheaval and uncertainty, tech giant Meta recently announced that later this year, they will be launching a “new education product” for their Quest “mixed reality” headsets, for “learners aged 13+.”¹

Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg is the author of the April 15 announcement, and he’s also given a handful of short interviews about the potential of using “immersive technologies” like Quest headsets in education. Though Clegg clearly knows how to frame this as the indisputable next step in humanity’s journey of progress and innovation, we need to look past the marketing language, demand answers to the questions he’s dodging, and consider the broader implications of what Meta is predicting and clearly hoping for: that “immersive technologies in [educational] settings…[are] adopted on a much wider scale.”² Whether you’re a parent, an educator, or simply a concerned citizen, our kids deserve our due diligence and our best efforts to bring about what’s really best for them, especially after all the educational disruption they’ve been subjected to in recent years.

Photo from Meta’s April 15, 2024 announcement, “New Education Product for Quest Devices Will Help Teachers Bring Subjects to Life in New Ways.” Note that this still image is displayed on mobile, while a 1-minute marketing video is displayed on desktop. The video’s depiction of people interacting without the headset is notable, but beyond the scope of this piece.

Stripping Away Meta’s Marketing Language

Unsurprisingly, Clegg leans heavily into the promise that immersive technologies will unlock new possibilities for education. Near the beginning of his announcement, Clegg writes: “[Metaverse technologies like virtual, mixed and augmented reality]³ also make things possible that are impossible in the physical world. Instead of telling students what the dinosaurs were like, they can walk among them.” (Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, Oxford Languages defines the metaverse as “a virtual-reality [VR] space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.”⁴ ) On its surface, this prospect sounds great — who wouldn’t want to give kids a richer experience of something they’d usually learn about through a video anyway?

However, if we carefully consider another example Clegg gives, it becomes clear that his perspective on education is antithetical to the one that teachers work so tirelessly to put into practice for their students. In an interview with Axios, correspondent Jennifer Kingson quotes Clegg:

“If you’re teaching a bunch of kids about ancient Rome, just imagine what fun it is to walk with the whole class through the streets of ancient Rome together,” Clegg said. “And people can giggle and say, ‘Oh, look, there’s Brutus plunging a knife into the back of Julius Caesar.’”

This remark reflects such flippancy and casual oversimplification of reality that it’s almost difficult to believe. Clegg holds up an example of an “educational experience” in which students’ engagement is prioritized above their growth — academic, social, and emotional. Giggling at an incredibly consequential assassination may be considered “engagement” to Meta executives, but anyone who’s dedicated their life to teaching history is striving for much deeper, more meaningful engagement. It might be “fun” for students to spend their class time in a glorified video game, but creative and passionate teachers don’t need students to strap high-tech headsets to their faces to be able to bring learning to life.

It’s also deceptive for Clegg to imply that the “educational experiences” provided by immersive technologies are the obvious, best alternative to what he calls the “joyless way of learning” experienced by “rows of children sit[ting] in silence behind desks staring at pages in a book.”⁵ Yes, the challenges faced by our schools may require different tools than most teachers currently use, as well as more budget and creative freedom for teachers — but it by no means follows that we should jump to buying high-tech headsets if we want to abandon dry, fact-focused textbooks.

It’s to Clegg’s advantage to draw this exaggerated comparison because it distracts from his lack of clear and compelling evidence that Quest devices can actually help kids learn. In both his original announcement and subsequent interviews, Clegg consistently references the benefits that colleges have seen when trying out immersive technologies, and implies that such benefits would extend to children — consider his very general use of the term “students” and his statement, “At launch, we plan to make the product available…to institutions serving learners aged 13+.”⁶ However, Clegg provides no evidence that immersive technologies could provide significant educational benefits to students younger than college age, and even the evidence of benefits in college settings seems very limited and preliminary. In fact, CNN’s piece on this topic quotes Vincent Quan, an education researcher and co-executive director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab:

“I think that (VR) is one area that really would benefit from having some additional research.…With technology, sure, it can have a lot of promise, but at the same time, it can also be a lot of hype, and I think it’s important to rigorously evaluate these types of technologies.”⁷

And later in the piece Quan says, “Sometimes with these new ed tech tools, they seem really promising…[but they] actually make[] the inequality gap widen.”

It’s worth noting that Clegg also dodged a direct question about Quest headsets’ potential benefits in his interview with NPR. When NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe asked him “if headsets were an answer for students struggling with reading or math, areas where test scores have been at their lowest level in decades,” Clegg said that “learners” in one study had been more “engaged,” and mentioned improvements in generic “test scores” at one college. In both cases he neglected to mention if reading or math had been included in these studies. Clegg then pivoted to a completely different topic; he said, “This isn’t just about, kind of, academic learning,” and gave the example of a welding school in Tusla that’s using VR.

Similarly, when CNN writer Clare Duffy asked Clegg about cost, Clegg said that visiting a museum in virtual reality would be cheaper in the long run — as if viewing a digital representation of a museum’s collection is equivalent to being mere inches away from profoundly meaningful, human artifacts. This is clearly a false premise, especially to those of us who have marveled at the intricacies of ancient artisans’ work, or discovered the evidence of brushstrokes that a famous painter used to create his masterpiece hundreds of years ago.

Essentially, it’s still very unclear whether Quest headsets would help facilitate children’s learning at all, and they might even worsen existing inequalities in our educational systems, or divert money that would be better used to address students’ struggles in the fundamentals. But rather than facilitating further research, Meta wants to begin rolling these devices out to millions of “learners aged 13+” around the world beginning in just mere months, in the fall of 2024. Why is that? I think it’s clear when we look at Meta’s long-term vision for its business, coupled with its very consistent and damning record of previous conduct toward children — both of which we’ll examine next.

Analyzing Meta’s Incentives

In his interview with Axios, Clegg downplays Meta’s financial incentive in the education market: “We accept that it’s going to take a long time, and we’re not going to be making any money on this anytime soon.” That is probably true, but there are layers of incentives lurking beneath the surface. As CNN’s piece says:

“The push to make VR more accessible for teachers and students is part of Meta’s long-term, multi-billion dollar bet on the so-called metaverse: The company believes that in the coming years, humans will use virtual reality headsets to spend increasing amounts of time working, learning and interacting in a digital version of the world.”

However, this long-term bet has been very rocky for Meta so far. As the UK’s National Technology News reports in their piece on Meta headsets in education, Meta has already lost billions in recent years “at its VR arm Reality Labs”. Similarly, Axios notes, “Quest is the most popular VR platform ever, and it’s doing reasonably well — but not achieving the kind of scale Meta/Facebook is used to. So the education strategy is a long-term growth effort…”

So what can Meta do to further their progress toward this vision, when immersive technologies have proven an incredibly tough sell even among those who have overwhelmingly adopted social media platforms? They can get these products into the hands of children. As you might have already inferred, it’s critical that Meta get children to use their “metaverse technologies” because children adopt technology notoriously quickly, and they often take technology for granted as part of how the world works, because they can’t remember a time without it. In some cases, this can be helpful, or even comical; for example, my family likes to laugh about the video of my oldest when he was just about 2 years old, attempting to command my old portable speaker to play his favorite show on Netflix. However, this readiness to adopt technology can create perverse incentives for companies like Meta.

In fact, it’s already clear that exploiting and manipulating kids is critical to Meta’s business model. Meta has been hooking kids on their products for years, to the detriment of children’s sleep, physical activity, mental health, and so much more — and they’ve been illegally lying about doing so.⁸ It’s almost impossible for the average parent to keep up with the revelations from Meta whistleblowers, from Frances Haugen declaring that “Facebook ‘Chooses Profits Over Safety,’” to Arturo Béjar sharing his “extremely disturbing” twin discoveries — that “Instagram hosts the largest-scale sexual harassment of teens to have ever happened,” and that Meta executives were unwilling to take “any action to address the harm teens are experiencing.” Researchers from outside Meta have also sounded similar and even more chilling warnings, such as in the Wall Street Journal piece “Instagram Connects Vast Pedophile Network.” And yet, Meta continues to focus on getting and keeping young and vulnerable “users” “engaged” on their platforms, rather than making meaningful and long overdue changes to their products or policies.

Now, Meta may be embroiled in scandal after scandal around their profound disregard for children’s well-being, but if the company can get schools to adopt their Quest headsets in any significant way, that would communicate to students, parents, and the community at large that these devices are beneficial and worthwhile for kids to use. That is, it would become socially validated for children to use Quest headsets, and for adults to purchase them for children.⁹ It seems clear that Meta’s proposed age cutoff of “13+” is significant as well. As sociologist and author

Jonathan Haidt

has observed with regard to middle schoolers’ use of smartphones, if the oldest cohort of a group uses a given technology, younger members will be driven to use it, too. In the U.S., nearly all those in 8th grade, the final grade of “middle school,” are 13 years old before the start of the school year — so those children could start using Meta’s Quest headsets as soon as this coming school year. And sure, it might be only 13 year-olds using the headsets in school, but some subset of those students would get their own Quest device for at home, and some subset of younger middle schoolers would inform their parents of the “cool new headsets at school” and subsequently receive one as a gift (not to mention that headsets would probably be used by younger siblings).

Meta announced back in September 2023 that children as young as 10 years old would be able to use their Quest headsets to “access a vast array of engaging and educational content in VR,” so the idea that Meta wants to drive adoption of their Quest headsets among pre-teen children is in no way an unfounded, theoretical possibility.

Children are the user demographic most likely to adopt Meta’s Quest headsets, and then continue using them for decades to come. Faced with this reality, can we really expect Meta to break from its well-documented record of disregarding children’s well-being? Or should we expect Meta to seize the opportunity to normalize this device among children in order to create a user base for their product, despite having no evidence of any significant educational benefit?

I encourage you to read on, but if you’re ready to take action immediately, you can download the editable letter templates I’ve put together, to help you share this information with your school’s principal and your local school board:

Moving Beyond the “Moral Panic” Narrative

Unfortunately, much discussion of what’s best for children has recently been stymied by the accusation that those who raise concerns about children’s use of digital technology are simply fomenting a “moral panic.” To some degree, I understand this objection; no one wants to needlessly acquiesce to another person’s moral code, especially when doing so requires us to collectively place limits on some of the newest, most exciting innovations. Reasonable people can certainly disagree about the moral issues surrounding digital technology; however, even if you believe that technology is neither good nor bad, you undoubtedly have some moral beliefs around technology. For example, you’d likely agree it is morally repugnant to create “deepfake” (AI-generated) pornography of children based on entirely innocuous images their parents have shared online.¹⁰ But let’s set aside the question of whether or not it’s “good” for our children to use virtual or “mixed” reality headsets, or even smartphones, social media, and the like. Let’s table the question of whether these digital technologies have caused the epidemic — or really, pandemic — of childhood mental illness. Instead, let’s consider whether it seems reasonable to assume that Meta’s vision for humanity’s future is essentially equivalent to or better than a future in which we reject what Meta is selling. This final analytical lens is probably the least practical, but to me, it’s the most compelling.

What I find to be Clegg’s most striking assertion comes at almost the very beginning of his announcement. He writes:

“learning is social.…It’s about interactions and discussion as much as it is about absorbing facts. That’s why the unique feeling of presence and immersion these technologies create can be so impactful in education.”

But in what way do we want our children to be present? Every day, with every interaction, our children are learning how to be present, how to interact with the world around them — especially the other people in the world around them. From the very moment of our birth, humans look to the faces of our mothers and other caregivers, and for millennia, the ways humans interact had been essentially unchanged. Through hours and hours of practice, we hone our ability to attune ourselves to those we are truly present with — we learn the intricacies of their body language, we experience how adjusting our behavior impacts their responses, and we lay the foundation for deep and meaningful bonds with others, both in childhood and adulthood. All of this immersed us in the culture that humanity had held in common for countless generations. But now, all of this — this shared heritage of human interaction, this common pattern for human development — is vanishing. And it will vanish even further if we decide to stay silent and let Meta continue with their sales plans unimpeded.

It doesn’t matter how amazingly “real” the graphics feel, or how “immersive” the experience is — if we are telling our kids that by strapping a headset to their faces and staring at the same picture as others, they can experience a “unique feeling of presence” worth pursuing, then we will be imparting to them a profoundly hollow understanding of what it means to be part of a robust, truly human community.

If you want your child to use a “mixed reality” headset that you’ve purchased, I cannot tell you that it’s inappropriate for you to do so; you know your child best, and you make the rules for your family. However, I think it’s clear that Meta has no basis for pushing their Quest headsets on our schools, and I believe we all must take concrete action to ensure that Meta is not allowed to bring their profound disregard for our children’s well-being into our children’s classrooms.

Taking Action Together

In order to drive real, meaningful change quickly enough to match Meta’s pace, we must all take real, meaningful action as soon as possible. We cannot settle for simply signing our names to an online petition and hoping that the petition eventually results in nationwide or statewide legislation. That’s why I’ve provided two editable letter templates. For parents with school-age children, you can customize and send both letters, one to your school’s principal and one to your local school board. For anyone who doesn’t have school-age children (or who homeschools), I still encourage you to send a letter to your local school board, because the education of our communities’ children matters to all of us.

You can also support this effort by sharing this article with your friends, family, and anyone else who might be willing to help drive meaningful change around this issue.

Finally, I’d greatly appreciate it if you would show your support for my work by subscribing and contributing financially if you are able. Digital with Discernment is an entirely reader-supported publication, and your contributions enable me to continue doing this work. Thank you!

1. Note that Meta’s initial launch of this “education product” will be to their “Quest for Business supported markets,” which includes “the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and several other English-speaking markets, along with Japan and much of western Europe” (list is per TechCrunch).

Separately, this PCMag article provides a helpful explanation for anyone unfamiliar with the terms “mixed reality,” “virtual reality,” and “augmented reality.”

2. See the announcement itself.

3. Note that “metaverse technologies” can include other technologies that underpin the metaverse, such as Artificial Intelligence. However, Clegg seems use the term “immersive technologies” (later in the announcement) interchangeably with this phrase that he uses as the very beginning, “metaverse technologies like virtual, mixed and augmented reality”. For clarity and brevity, I will use “immersive technologies.”

4. Accessed with a quick Google search of “define metaverse” on May 7, 2024.

5. See the very end of CNN's piece on the topic. Note that “educational experiences” is my phrase, not Clegg’s, though he does use similar terminology. The other two phrases in quotes are Clegg’s.

6. See the second-to-last paragraph of Meta’s announcement. I removed the phrase “in our Quest for Business supported markets” for brevity; see footnote 1 above for the explanation of which countries are included.

7. Parentheses in the original.

8. See the Center for Humane Technology’s podcast Your Undivided Attention, episode 84: “U.S. Senators Grilled Social Media CEOs. Will Anything Change?”, especially the top of pg. 5 of the transcript.

9. Thank you to Jonathan Haidt and Tristan Harris for bringing up this idea of activities being “socially validated” by schools. See their conversation on the Your Undivided Attention podcast, episode 87: “Jonathan Haidt On How to Solve the Teen Mental Health Crisis”.

10. For more on this topic, see Your Undivided Attention, episode 83: “Taylor Swift is Not Alone: The Deepfake Nightmare Sweeping the Internet”.