Parental Supervision

We know that while all parents or guardians want to keep their teens safe, not everyone has the expertise to easily do this in the virtual world. Our goal with these parental supervision tools is to make VR safety readily accessible, transparent and easy to understand.

• Oculus mobile app. The Oculus mobile app is where you’ll find parental supervision tools. You can download the app for free onto your phone using the links below:
  • Google Play Store
  • Apple App Store
• A Facebook account. This is what you’ll use to log into the Oculus mobile app in order to use parental supervision. If you don’t currently use Facebook, you can create a Facebook account using the Oculus Mobile app.
• An invite from your teen: Parents must be invited by a teen to support their Oculus account before they can begin using parental supervision with their teen’s headset.

In addition to the requirements outlined above, there are some additional requirements for both your account and your teen’s account:

• Teens can only have one parent or guardian supporting their account.
• Parents can support up to 5 teen accounts.
• Parents must be at least 18 years old.
• Parents and teens cannot use parental supervision if one account has blocked the other.
• Both teen and parent must have a Facebook account. Parental supervision cannot be set up on Oculus accounts that are not linked to Facebook.
• Both teen and parent Facebook accounts must not be disabled, deactivated or deleted.

The parent dashboard provides an overview of your teen’s VR activity.

• Time in VR: How much time your teen has spent in VR over the past week, broken down by day.
• Friends: You can see the VR usernames of people your teen is friends with in VR.
• Apps: The apps your teen has used and how much time they have spent in each app over the past week.

You can adjust parental supervision from the settings menu, accessible from the home screen of your parent dashboard. These settings include:

• Block Oculus Link: Oculus Link and Air Link allow your teen’s Quest headset to access additional apps by connecting the headset to a computer through a Link cable or wirelessly via Air Link. When turned on, your teen will need to request permission from you before they can connect their headset to a PC.
• Notifications: This allows you to adjust your parental supervision notification settings and how they appear on your phone or in VR. Making adjustments to your notifications won’t change or affect your teen’s notifications, but your teen will be able to see which notifications you have turned on.
• Disconnect From Teen: When selected, this will remove you as a parent from your teen’s VR account. Keep in mind that this option can’t be reversed. This means that if you decide you want to support your teen’s future VR experience, they’ll need to send you a new invite to initiate parental supervision setup again.

To adjust your parental supervision settings:

By default, teens won’t be able to purchase, download or use apps that aren’t rated as appropriate for their age. For example, if your teen is 13, they won’t be able to access an app rated ages 17 and up without your permission. However, any mature apps that your teen has already downloaded to their own library prior to the launch of parental supervision tools won’t be blocked by default.

If you’d like to give your teen access to a blocked app, they can send you a request to allow them to purchase, download or use it.

Note: This feature may not be available in all countries.

You can also proactively block an individual app in the Meta Quest Store. Keep in mind that to block individual apps:

• Your teen needs to invite you to support their VR experience and you need to accept the invite in order to set up parental supervision.
• Some system level apps can’t be blocked as they're necessary for your teen’s headset to work properly. Some of these apps include Store, File Manager and Settings.

Automatic app age restrictions apply to apps that your teen is trying to purchase or download from the Meta Quest store. Any mature apps that your teen has already downloaded to their own library prior to the launch of parental supervision tools won’t be blocked by default.

If you want to block an app that your teen has already downloaded:

If your teen requests to download a mature app and you grant their request, that app will be available to them in their library. However, if your teen decides to stop using parental supervision tools, they will lose access to that app until they reach the appropriate age.

As a parent or guardian, you can’t set up parental supervision without first being invited by your teen to do so, but you can stop supporting your teen's account by disconnecting from them. Keep in mind, if you decide to stop parental supervision, automatic app age restrictions will continue but any custom parental supervision settings you applied will be reset and your teen will be notified of the change. If you want to use parental supervision again in the future, your teen will need to send you a new invite.

A content rating for an app is like a movie rating. Content ratings determine how old your teen needs to be to download the app without your permission.

As your teen gets older, they will age out of specific content ratings. For example, when your 15 year old turns 16, they’ll have access to apps rated for 16+ that they couldn’t download without your permission before they turned 16. Keep in mind:

• Aging out of a content rating does not affect your current parental supervision features or the account connection between you and your teen.
• If you manually blocked an app that your teen is now old enough to download, it will remain blocked (unless you allow it manually.)

We want to respect your privacy and autonomy while also helping you have a positive experience in VR. When parental supervision features are enabled, you’ll see exactly what’s shared with your parent or guardian, as well as which VR features they’ve disabled.

• Oculus mobile app. The Oculus mobile app is where you’ll find parental supervision features. You can download the free app onto your phone using the links below:
  • Google Play Store
  • Apple App Store
• A Facebook account. This is what you’ll use to log in to view the parental supervision features. If you don’t currently use Facebook, you can create a Facebook account using the Quest app.
• A Meta Quest or Meta Quest 2 headset.
• Your consent: The only way your parents can support your VR experiences is if you send them an invite. They can’t set up parental supervision without you initiating the process, and you can turn the feature off at any time.

In addition to the requirements outlined above, there are some additional requirements for both your account and your parent’s account:

• Teens can only have one parent or guardian supporting their account.
• Parents can support up to 5 teen accounts.
• Parents must be at least 18 years old.
• Parents and teens cannot use parental supervision if one account has blocked the other.
• Both teen and parent must have a Facebook account. Parental supervision cannot be set up on Oculus accounts that are not linked to Facebook.
• Both teen and parent Facebook accounts must not be disabled, deactivated or deleted.

Parental supervision provides full visibility into what your parent or guardian can see with regards to your VR activity. This includes:

• Time in VR broken down by day: How much time you’ve spent in VR over the past week.
• Friends: The VR username of people that you’re friends with in VR.
• Apps: The apps that you’ve used, and how much time you've spent in each app over the past week.

You can see the same information that your parent can see at any time from their dashboard. To do this:

Keep in mind, even if your VR privacy setting is set to Only Me, your parent can still see your activity as long as you have parental supervision turned on. That’s why we’re transparent with you about what your parent can see.

You can access both your own and your parent or guardian’s settings menu for parental supervision. That way, you can see what settings your parent is currently using to help support your VR experience.

• Block Apps Based on Age Rating: By default, you will be blocked in the Meta Quest Store from downloading or purchasing all apps that are rated above your current age. However, you can request that your parent allow individual apps on a case-by-case basis.
  • If your parent turns this setting off, you will be able to access any apps regardless of content rating and your parent will have to block any apps manually.
• Block Oculus Link: Link and Air Link let you access additional apps by connecting your Meta Quest headset to a PC through a Link cable or wirelessly via Air Link. If your parent turns this setting on, you’ll need to request access from your parent before you can connect your headset to a PC.
• Your Parent’s Notifications: This section lets you see your parent’s notification settings, including information on what notifications they choose to receive.

• Your Notifications: You can toggle which parental supervision notifications you'd like to receive here.
• Disconnect From Parent: When selected, this option will remove you as a supported teen from your parent's Oculus account. Keep in mind that you have 24 hours to change your mind about this decision. After 24 hours, this option can’t be reversed. That means if you decide you want to turn parental supervision back on, you’ll need to resend a parent an invite to connect.

You can see what settings your parent currently has applied, and adjust your own settings in the Oculus mobile app. To do this:

To download an app that’s rated above your current age, you can request access from your parent or guardian.

Keep in mind, if you decide not to have a parent support your account through parental supervision, you’ll be blocked from purchasing or downloading any app in the Meta Quest store with a content rating above your current age.

If you requested to download an app from the Meta Quest store and your parent granted that request, you’ll be able to use the app as long as you stay connected to your parent’s account. If you decide to stop using parental supervision tools and disconnect from your parent, you will lose access to any of these previously-approved apps if their content rating is still above your current age.

Any apps rated above your age that you purchased or downloaded before the launch of parental supervision tools will still be accessible from your library.

After inviting your parent or guardian to support your experience, you can decide to disconnect your account from your parent’s account at any time. To do this:

A content rating for an app is like a movie rating. Content ratings determine how old you need to be to download the app without your parent’s permission.

As you get older, you’ll age out of specific content ratings and be able to download new apps within the next rating. For example, when you turn 16, you’ll be able to download apps rated for 16+ that you couldn’t download without your parent’s permission before. Keep in mind:

• Aging out of a content rating does not affect your current parental supervision features or the account connection between you and your parent.
• If your parent manually blocked an app that you’re now old enough to purchase or download, you’ll need to request that your parent allow access to it.