Part 5: Dark Sides of the Metaverse

written by 10702 Kim Min Joo, 10801 Kang Seo Rin,

20121 Lee Go Eun, 20321 Yim Tae Hee

& 20720 Jeong Da Eun

Here is final part of the five-part series on the virtual world being a blessing or a curse.

Some people view the metaverse as a new opportunity to expand their range of daily lives. Those people say that people can meet their friends, watch famous singers’ performances, and even attend company meetings in the metaverse. However, despite all the potential benefits of the metaverse, there are still some reservations about it.

Are You Sure About Your Security?

The biggest problem is the uncertainty of ensuring the security of the data. Since the metaverse is based on a massive amount of data, guaranteeing the security of the data is the top priority.

However, the metaverse is vulnerable to hacking and exploitation of data since the technology is still under development.

In August 2020, hackers got into the U.S. online game Roblox system. They exposed explicit images and racist messages, and controlled game characters to commit lewd acts, causing nationwide outrage. What’s more, it wasn’t even the first time Roblox got hacked. It has been hacked in 2012 and the platform was seriously damaged with the wrong banners and stolen accounts, which is referred to as the April Fool’s Hack. Likewise, other metaverse platforms also have the potential to get attacked by hackers.

Platform companies that provide metaverse services might also use consumers’ data for their benefit. Service users do not know or understand how their data is processed after they give it to corporations. Companies could take advantage of that massive data when designing a new product or even sell it to other data-based companies. For instance, in 2016, British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica was found to have collected data from 80 million Facebook users for political advertising purposes before the U.S. presidential election. Facebook even admitted that there has been a leakage of personal information of about 500 million users in April 2021. A similar problem is likely to appear on metaverse platforms as they become more and more popular.

Metaverse Addiction

People are likely to fall into a so-called metaverse addiction. Unlike existing online games and social platforms, a metaverse resembles socioeconomic activities in the real world with high similarity. Virtual currency is circulated and it covers a much wider range of our daily lives from work meetings to leisure sports and communication with foreign friends. Due to its extreme similarity, the metaverse is perceived as daily life and sometimes a shelter from a tough life. Once they build an ideal character’s life on the platform, they become more attracted to it and begin to feel that the life there is more enjoyable and happier than the one in reality. Since it’s hard to live one’s life as one would like it to be for everything in real life, an easier and thus more ideal version of life in metaverse becomes a shelter.

Metaverse addiction could be more prevalent especially in young people as they are in the period of acquiring their self-concept and in the transition period of both physical and mental being. Most of all, the gap between the character in the metaverse and the character in real life is a serious problem. Since the provided environments are different, the users inevitably form two different egos. While the ego formed in reality has to deal with the limited environment and consequent troubles, the ego in the metaverse can experience a variety of environments and opportunities with few obstacles. As a result, young people might lose their sense of self-perception and waver between the two distinct egos.

In a worst-case scenario, the metaverse can devastate the real life of young people and cause mental illnesses. Besides extreme diseases such as dissociative identity disorder, simply not having a clear self-image of oneself can have a significant impact on one’s life. Oftentimes, those people who lack a clear self-image have a hard time forging healthy relationships and figuring out the direction of their life.

My Opinion

Metaverse technologies are developing rapidly and yet can negatively influence people’s lives. There must be in-depth discussion and efforts to deal with the side effects and anxiety along with promoting commercialization and technological development.

There should be more institutional and technological efforts to secure the data fully. The government should implement policies that regulate the form and basic rules of the metaverse. Setting up the minimum age to create a metaverse account and requiring people to go through the identification process before creating it would be a good example to protect juveniles from being exposed to the dark side of the metaverse. More laws to protect consumers from indiscriminate use of metaverse technologies should be established.

At the same time, corporations should hire more white hats. White hats can help prevent malicious content from being exposed and supplement the flaws of the technologies. They can also establish an internal inspection team that can hold the company itself in check.

To prevent metaverse addiction in young people, all parties must take measures. Schools must educate their students about desirable ways to deal with the metaverse and help them distinguish the real world from the metaverse. Parents’ support and aid to guide their children to solidify their true selves would be a good way as well. The government also has to make efforts to keep the juveniles away from being too obsessed with the metaverse and help those who have been addicted to the metaverse through a variety of policies such as launching metaverse-focused counseling centers.

The metaverse definitely has the power to alter the paradigm of our daily lives. Therefore, it is essential to set the direction, not toward doomed dystopia but instead, set it for human prosperity in the early stages.