Posted by Many companies are adapting to this new life we started living this year. They have taken into account how people are no longer engaging in social interactions, at least as much as they used to. Instead, people are spending time on the internet and conducting hangouts via digital media. So how has a major social media platform like Facebook adapted their products and services to meet these needs of the consumer? They own and run Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus, and are advancing technology in these areas in order to keep up and stay ahead of current trends. For instance, they are releasing a software called Horizon in which users can interact by using the Oculus Quest digital headgear system. When wearing the eye mask, users become fully-immersed in a cartoon-avatar metaverse and are then able to spend time doing hundreds of different activities, whether it be cooking, designing, or conducting a business meeting.
Facebook Horizon represents creativity in the form of building any kind of life you want. Someone could clone their current lifestyle or reinvent it in a completely alternate form. Facebook’s ability to give people this freedom in the form of virtual reality is unlike most technologies in the past. The option to be as visually involved as you choose is one that the world is unfamiliar with; being fully-immersed with minimal sense of actual surroundings gives people a new perception of digital media. In the article, Doing Cultural Studies, this kind of technological and cultural innovation is shown as substantive due to this expanse of a mass media. Horizon is a representation of newfound experiences in which Facebook is harnessing its social media marketing power to be able to stay in the lead. Oculus Quest is carrying out the duties of becoming this top technology, and can forever change the way we communicate, even reducing the number of in-person social gatherings as we knew before the pandemic. Since the number of users that have increased their use of digital media by one to two hours is at nearly thirty percent, we can assume that at least some of these additional hours are an investment of time in social media appliances. We cannot tell for sure what long-term term impacts COVID-19 will have on our society, but for the time being the amount of time being spent on devices is skyrocketing.
The Oculus Quest device is not meant for everyone. Facebook is targeting a younger generation of users that started to grow up in the digital age and are able to master challenging types of equipment. For example, the headgear completely covers the eyes and involves active movement in order to function. Older users have often reported headaches being induced by intense motion. So, for Gen Z, virtual reality could be a substitute for social gatherings!
This pandemic might be an accidental miracle in the eyes of Mark Zuckerberg. There is a definite barrier that has been lifted from society which helps the transition to online life become smoother. Since people are already on devices even more and are itching to get out into social scenes, a virtual reality system is the closest thing there is. This inspires more and more people to purchase these systems and will consequently boost Facebooks name further and it will yet again take over another aspect of our lives.