Design

Designing safety and user empowerment in social immersive apps

Updated: Sep 19, 2025

Keeping the metaverse safe by empowering your users, particularly marginalized and vulnerable groups, to confidently manage their participation in social virtual spaces is a shared responsibility for Meta and app developers for the Meta Quest and other supported devices. The requirements and recommendations outlined here are meant to assist you in making your users feel safe, keep them coming back, and ultimately help your app succeed. It’s vital when building social experiences in your apps to provide users control and agency over their virtual social interactions.

By leaning into safety by design in your app you can help empower users to better establish:

Protection from unwanted interactions.

Feel more confident and in control.

Enjoy a safer and more positive user experience.

Build user confidence in your brand.

Foster a healthier community within your app.

Check out this short video course on content moderation and reporting compliance⁠ to jump-start your journey.

Requirements

As a baseline, multiplayer or social apps with or without user-generated content must have a user submittable conduct form for them to notify the developer about conduct in the app that does not adhere to the Code of Conduct for Virtual Experiences⁠ (VRC.Content.3). This requirement ensures that all developers maintain responsibility for their community and foster a positive environment. As a developer, you’re expected to ensure adherence to the Code of Conduct for Virtual Experiences (CCVE) by acting on user reports.

Note: If you don’t act on CCVE violations, Meta will start to notify users on your Store listing that your app is not in compliance. If you continue to ignore CCVE violations, your app could be removed from the store.

Example of a Store warning for not acting on user reports

Additionally, familiarize yourself with other VRCs and accessibility requirements as these are further guidelines to be considered for distribution to help you build high quality apps for Meta Quest headsets.

Experiencing a virtual body, like an avatar, as your own body is called virtual embodiment. In virtual immersive social environments, you are often co-present with other users’ avatars and interactions or events can feel like they are happening to your real body. This is one reason social experiences on a headset can feel more real than other digital experiences. Which creates opportunities for new ways people can have social experiences and interact in the Metaverse.

With these new innovations comes unique challenges for users to maintain boundaries, such as emotional and/or virtual physical safety. Your mind and body cannot always tell the difference. Bad experiences can lead people to remove their headsets and not return. This is why it’s important to consider safety in your social or multiplayer app design.

Safety is a basic human need in the real-world as well as a virtual one and by considering your audience and understanding body sovereignty and ownership as a guiding framework you can create and build a variety of features for immersive social experiences, which help users maintain a healthy virtual embodiment.

Note: By treating virtual embodiment with respect and considering safety in social experiences in your app design, you can create safer and more inclusive environments that can help keep users coming back to your app.

Consider your audience

Social issues faced in the real-world sometimes carry over to immersive social experiences, with many users citing harassment or abuse as the reason for leaving an app and not returning. This issue not only affects individual users who have experienced harassment but also affects the overall user experience for others and any sense of community in your social experience. Design your app so that it addresses abuse and harassment with the recognition that groups experience these harms differently.

Accessible design and age groups

Ensure that your virtual world is welcoming to all users by designing avatars, environments, and interactions that are inclusive and respectful. Collect basic user information on sign-up or before they start your apps social experience and add parental control settings for accounts with younger ages. Additionally, consider different ways to locomote and accommodate various physical and sensory representations.

See the accessibility VRCs and accessibility design for more guidance.

Note: Remember that it’s okay if you don’t get everything right on the first try - even rigorous testing processes can’t cover every scenario. It’s important to try, learn, and adapt.

By considering accessibility in your design you can tailor and diversify your social experiences to meet the needs of your app’s different user groups.

Youth and younger age groups

Additionally, to create a more accessible and comfortable experience for users, consider designing immersive spaces that cater correctly to your app’s target age group. This allows individuals to choose environments that match their comfort level and interests, ensuring they feel at ease with others in the space. Also, consider potential risks to young users and implement strategies to mitigate them. Some additional protections could include:

Look to add a personal boundary/bubble to empower your users and establish a space based framework.

Limit messages and contact from strangers by default and offer app-level parental controls to manage interactions for preteens.

Communicate in a way that young people understand. Tailor the reading level and level of detail of instructions and important information to the youngest age group most likely to access the app.

Use visuals (such as diagrams, animations, graphics) or interactive content to convey information or explain features. This is especially helpful during onboarding, introducing a new feature, when first surfacing a user permission, and other key moments.

Understand the target ages of your users to ensure content is age-appropriate, avoid mature content for teens and preteens.

Educate youth to empower them in protecting their own wellbeing. Drawing parallels to physical spaces, like public parks or sports complexes, can help in conceptualizing safety measures for virtual environments.

Features that allow users to pause or enter a safe space during intense experiences can support wellbeing.

Incorporating tools to detect and filter offensive language.

Encouraging inclusive behavior and positive interactions can be achieved by reminding users of the Code of Conduct for Virtual Experiences⁠ and your app’s own code of conduct. Consideration should be given to situations that may lead to bullying or exclusion, with strategies in place to discourage such behavior.

Body sovereignty and ownership: empowering users virtual spaces

Designing safer virtual social spaces can start with understanding real-world social norms. Virtual social norms in digital environments are not fully defined yet, because VR/AR/MR and spatial computing devices, like a headset, are still emerging technologies. Look at how real-world social norms can be mirrored in your app’s virtual environments. Think about the real-world equivalent locations and expected behaviors, norms, laws. A question you should ask, as you are designing your app is:

How can I (or our team) integrate consent, body sovereignty, and respect into our new virtual environment?

As you develop, look at adopting a space-based framework like Proxemics, inspired by anthropologist Edward T. Hall. He studied human behavior in various spatial contexts and he categorized experiences based on their distance from the body.

Illustration of Edward T. Hall’s Zones of Interpersonal Space.

Proxemics explores the relationship between identity, surroundings, and social norms as a spatial scale. It categorizes interpersonal space into four zones: public, social, personal, and intimate, with each zone having a proximity and established code of conduct that offers explicit rules for what behaviors are acceptable and unacceptable. All people should have complete ownership of their bodies and any interactions that should occur to them. Understanding these zones and the real-life social norms can help in crafting appropriate virtual interactions for each zone in an immersive social experience.

Zone	Real-life social norms
Public Zone (12 feet and beyond)	Public spaces, such as parks or libraries, serve as models for safe virtual environments. People generally keep a distance from each other in public spaces, avoiding physical contact or personal conversations. Loud noise levels are often tolerated in public spaces, but not in quieter areas like libraries. Strangers may strike up conversations in public spaces, but it's not expected to be overly personal or intrusive.
Social Zone (4 to 12 feet)	In social settings, people may engage in small talk or casual conversations, but avoid sensitive or personal topics. Physical touch, like handshakes or hugs, may occur in social settings, but it's not always expected or required. Group conversations, activities, games, may take place in social settings, but individuals may also choose to engage in one-on-one conversations.
Personal Zone (1.5 to 4 feet)	In personal spaces, people may engage in more intimate conversations or share personal thoughts and feelings. Physical touch, like holding hands or giving hugs, may be more common in personal spaces, but it's still important to respect boundaries. Individuals may choose to set boundaries or limits on their personal space, and others should respect those boundaries.
Intimate Zone (0 to 18 inches)	Most sensitive zone and where users should have the ability to customize and fine-tune control over interactions. In intimate spaces, people may engage in very personal or private activities, like relationships or confidential conversations. Individuals may choose to share personal secrets or vulnerabilities in intimate spaces, and others should maintain confidentiality and trust. Physical touch, like kissing or cuddling, may be more common in intimate spaces, but it's essential to prioritize consent and respect.

Actively seek out real-life social norms and ethics to inform your development process and embrace continuously improving and adapting your own approach to ensure a safe and responsible user experience for your app.

Physical distance in immersive experiences

In immersive experiences, physical distance is a complex concept that can be challenging to define, and unlike in the real-world, distances are relative to your app and can vary depending on the specific application or experience. However, these distances are approximate and may not always be relevant or applicable. You should feel free to define your own unit of measurement for distance in your apps, as it may not always be necessary to use real-world units, like feet or meters. To provide a general framework for understanding physical distance in virtual world, rough estimates can be used, such as:

Zone	Approximate feet
Public	12+
Social	11 - 5
Personal	4 - 3
Intimate	2 - 1

Instead explore these distances through in-app testing one or more teammates to ensure that the chosen distance measurements work effectively within your app, taking into account factors such as user comfort, interaction, and overall experience.

Building body virtual sovereignty, ownership, and agency

Explore some features ideas to ensure safe and inclusive virtual social spaces, fostering healthy virtual embodiment.

Codes of Conduct and community guidelines

After ensuring that your app meets all the requirements, you should create an additional Code of Conduct or community guidelines for your social experiences and display them prominently in your app, such as on the login screen or within the virtual space as reminders.

You should outline expected behavior and consequences for violations to encourage respectful interactions, and ensure consistency in enforcement across all parts of the app to build trust and maintain safety. This helps prevent harassment and educate users on expected behavior, allowing you to create a more nuanced and respectful experience that adapts to different social situations and activities. Consider adding the following features to enhance the community guidelines experience:

Guidelines feedback: Allow users to provide feedback on the community guidelines, suggesting changes or additions. This can help build stronger communities by letting the community dictate and improve outlined expected behavior and consequences for violating those guidelines.

Guidelines education: Offer educational resources, such as tutorials, videos, or workshops, to help users understand and follow the community guidelines.

Clearly display Codes and guidelines: Display your app’s code of conduct or guidelines prominently, including clear examples of good and bad behaviors.

Moderation transparency: Explain to users how their behavior will be moderated, including methods such as automatic voice moderation, community admins, or moderation teams, or user reporting tools. Make it easy for users to report harassment or other forms of abuse, and ensure that reports are addressed promptly and fairly.

Addressing Harassment: Consider the prevalence of harassment for different groups in real life, so you can take steps to address it in immersive experiences. Harassment issues could include: people invading another’s personal or intimate zone, cyber-stalking, or obscene gestures.

By establishing clear guidelines and expectations, you can promote respect and inclusivity in your social experiences that are welcoming to all users.

Gathering and organizing feedback

Once your app is live, gather and organize feedback to address gaps and improve user experience. Effective methods include reading and responding to user reviews in the Developer Dashboard⁠, engaging with followers on social media, or using keywords or hashtags to find online discussions. Categorizing and quantifying feedback can highlight areas needing design adjustments.

Admin/Moderator Tools

Design a system where an “admin” or “Host” enforces community guidelines, reviews reports and takes actions like muting, removing, or banning users in real-time. Ensure that actions are contextually appropriate and proportionate to the violation’s severity, starting with gentler measures like warnings to allow users to learn from their mistakes. Clearly communicate enforcement details and offer an appeal process, making it clear that reports and enforcements are managed by you, the app developer, not Meta. This enables admins or moderators to warn or remove disruptive users, creating a safer and more respectful virtual environment that empowers users to set and maintain their own boundaries.

Moderator removal notification example: Guides and moderators can remove disruptive individuals from a session.

Onboarding and core settings

Give users an onboarding experience that allows them to customize core aspects of their virtual body, such as avatar appearance or how to turn on or off their microphone. By allowing them to customize core settings before entering social interactions can help empower users to feel safe and in control of their online presence. This sense of agency is a good entry point for users and for building trust and comfort in the virtual environment right at the start of the experience.

Proxemics Bubble/Collider

Develop a feature that allows users to create a proxemics bubble or collider around themselves, maintaining physical distance from others. This can be achieved using physics engines or collision detection systems to create a virtual boundary. Include settings that allow users to toggle and customize their personal bubble, adjusting its size, opacity, shape, and color. Additionally, enable users to send requests to enter another user’s personal bubble, with the recipient having the option to allow or revoke access, promoting respectful interactions and personal space management.

Proxemics example: Users can set their own preference of how close others can approach them. Other users will disappear if they get too close.

Allow users to set boundaries and define their ideal experience upfront, ensuring that interactions never violate their virtual personal or intimate zones. This can be achieved through granular controls and opt-in setup dialogs before entering an immersive social space. Users should feel confident and comfortable, with a clear understanding of what the relationship looks like and what boundaries have been established. Provide sliding scales of safety precautions for personal customization, allowing users to curate an ideal experience while preserving a social feel. Offer dialogs to prompt users to set their boundaries before any social interaction takes place, and provide options such as block, mute, or other customizable safety features to facilitate negotiation and boundary delineation.

Gestures

You should incorporate simple communication gestures and shortcuts to allow users to quickly report problematic experiences without interrupting their experience. This can be achieved through custom-tailored inclusive dialogs and reactionary tools, enabling all users to exercise control over their experience. Intuitive safety gestures can be used to react to personal space violations quickly and fluidly, providing a more natural way for users to communicate their boundaries. Established, codified gestures can be employed without removing immersion, allowing users to maintain control over their experience while still engaging with others.

Mute users

Implement a mute feature that allows users to silence others who are loud or disruptive by adding a mute button next to each user’s name or avatar. This feature should enable users to quickly mute voice chat and notifications, providing them with control over their audio environment. Additionally, allow users to mute themselves when they feel it’s necessary. This functionality, as demonstrated in Horizon Worlds, empowers users to manage their interactions and maintain a comfortable virtual experience.

Muting controls: To mute another user in the same space with you, just hover over their nameplate.

Report User

Create a reporting system that allows users to flag suspicious or abusive behavior by adding a report button next to each user’s name or avatar. This should open a form for users to describe the issue and attach evidence, such as screenshots or recordings. Consider educating users on how to gather evidence and provide clear instructions on when to create a report. Include reporting reasons specific to your app and make block and report features accessible with clear instructions. Utilize platform features like the User Reporting Service and Reporting Plugin to manage reports, and enable video or photo uploads for better evidence collection. Additionally, refer to required VRCs when using these platform tools, Finally, follow up with the reporter account to collect feedback and ensure the user feels supported.

As an example the social app Population: ONE uses the User Reporting Plugin to create a reporting flow that lists specific types of behavior they’d like users to report.

1. Native UI	Population: ONE’s reporting flow was made with the User Reporting Plugin so that the visual look and feel matches the rest of their in-game UI. This makes it clear to the user that this report will be handled by Population: ONE and not Meta.
2. Tailored reasons	The reasons for reporting a user are tailored for the context of the user. For example, since Population: ONE is a synchronous multiplayer game, you can’t report a user for any content-based reasons, only conduct-based misbehavior.
3. Freeform text entry	To provide more context, a user can enter additional details for any of the selected reasons.
4. Other category	For reports that may not cleanly fit into any of the provided categories, there’s an “Other” category.

Block, ban, or remove user(s)

Implement a system that allows users to block other users from interacting with them, and inform blocked users anonymously. Utilize the Blocking API for your engine (Native, Unity, Unreal) to uphold user blocks across the platform, creating a safer experience. Consider implementing features like poll to remove, which enables users to remove troublemakers from a room without admin involvement. For intermediate measures, remove users from a space temporarily, reminding them of community guidelines before allowing them to rejoin. When removing someone from a space, use subtle approaches like fading their avatar or meta representation to minimize disruption. Finally, establish a banning system for more severe cases, enforced by a central figure, as a more permanent option.

Safe space

Designate areas where users can retreat if they feel overwhelmed or need a break, such as a “Relaxation Room” with soothing music. Enhance the safe space experience by allowing users to customize it with preferred colors, textures, and sounds, and send notifications to remind them to take breaks and stay hydrated. The Pause feature, used in Meta Horizon, allows users to quickly exit social spaces with a one-touch button, providing options to mute, block, or report others. This feature is valued for its ability to help users feel safe and in control.