Exploring the Darkverse: A Multi-Perspective Analysis of the Negative Societal Impacts of the Metaverse

The metaverse has the potential to bring dreams to reality. From volcanoes to the sea, the metaverse can bring anything to reality with the help of the right tools and technology (Dwivedi et al., 2023a). Despite the benefits and virtualism that the metaverse can offer, there exists another perhaps more negative side to the metaverse. Although multiple viewpoints have articulated a positive narrative on the metaverse, at best, most are still individual perspectives. As is the case with many other technological advancements, the metaverse does have many limitations. However, compared to other immersive and interactive technologies, the metaverse can have substantial adverse consequences if not appropriately managed and controlled via effective governance (Xi et al., 2022). The darkverse is a recent term used to explain the organised crime that can take place within the virtual space (Analyticsinsight.net, 2022). We explain and extend the darkverse as a terminology that denotes the disadvantages of the metaverse. Most of the news articles discuss darkverse as a separate platform which can be used for online crime, without realising that darkverse can be present within the ecosystem of the metaverse in many ways. Of the negative effects present in the metaverse, some can be minimised by rigorous and timely intervention or policy directions, whereas the other effects may become exponentially more prominent as the penetration of the metaverse increases. The remaining sections of 2.1 discusses the adverse effects of the metaverse.

Figure 1 explains the five major consequences (themes) of the metaverse namely; psychological impacts, physiological impacts, security concerns, moral issues, and legal issues. These five factors were derived from the academic and practice-based literature. The issues mentioned in the intersection of two themes denotes consequences that arise in connection with the metaverse. For example: The topics meta exploitation, addiction, and traumatic effects can be a part of both security concerns and psychological impacts in varying contexts. The figure also explains five integrated security issues namely; emotional security, health security, personal security, cultural security, and social security which are holistically derived based on the major themes and their intersecting consequences. For example: social security is an intersectional derivation from the angle of psychological impacts, security concerns, and moral issues. Thus, the circles overall show the major themes and their interactive elements that can consequentially affect the users of the metaverse. These consequences can be addressed and explored in future studies with the use of holistic or specific theoretical setup, as given in the outer layer of the figures. These theories can be used in research to investigate these variables proposed inside the figure in detail.

The Metaverse as an emerging space of reality is still in the process of construction and evolution. While much research needs to be done to understand the risks and the dark side pertaining to the metaverse some observed dimensions are briefly treated here.

Some innovations take time to become profitable and mature. Others will never reach a mature stage. A clear example is the so-called Google Glass, a prototype of smart glasses that has failed to meet consumers’ expectations (Leonard, 2022).

Despite the amount of Google searches for the word “Metaverse” has exploded in recent times (EuPortal, 2022), the company Meta who went all in on the metaverse has lost a significant amount of capital, falling by more than 70% on the US stock market by October 2022. In what follows we discuss few technological issues and some consumer vulnerability issues that are slowing down the metaverse revolution.

Most of the journal space devoted to the metaverse concept, especially within marketing, focuses on potential benefits for consumers and brands (e.g., Dwivedi et al., 2023a; Rauschnabel et al., 2022a). However, there are emerging critical voices that question these benefits and call for caution when interacting in this space. Unfortunately, the term metaverse is currently not consistently defined in the literature. We conceptualize the term metaverse as a fully immersive three-dimensional environment able to integrate physical and/or virtual worlds. As such, metaverse can be accessed through XR interfaces such as VR and AR (e.g., Dwivedi et al., 2023a; Rauschnabel et al., 2022b).

Metaverse platforms also tend to imitate communities or societies; for instance, many offer some sort of ownership (e.g., virtual space, non-fungible tokens), the presence of others (e.g., in form of avatars), activities (e.g., concerts, games etc.), payment methods (e.g., crypto currencies), laws (i.e., specific rules), freedom of movement (discussed as interoperability), certain structures (often some sort of decentralization, e.g., through blockchain technology), and a three-dimensional environment (typically in augmented and virtual reality – summarized as XR; Rauschnabel et al., 2022b). We note that strictly speaking, the “true” metaverse does not exist today (Dwivedi et al., 2023a). Emerging common platforms, such as VRChat, Mozilla Hubs, The Sandbox, Decentraland, Spatial.io, SuperWorld, and SecondLife are considered to be “metaverse-like”, and therefore, are often called “proto metaverses”. For simplicity, we use the term metaverse throughout this section.

The following paragraphs discuss three major potential challenges of the metaverse concept that are particularly relevant from a consumer and societal perspective: The value of virtual products, privacy risks, and challenges associated with diminished reality. We note that this list based on the very early stages of metaverse development, and our negative tone should not be taken as call for political actions to hinder metaverse developments. Rather, we argue that an early understanding of these negative aspects can complement prior research and lead to a more theoretically holistic and societally beneficial understanding of this domain. Furthermore, addressing potential drivers of consumer backlash is likely also in the interest of brands seeking to develop the metaverse (e.g., hardware firms, platforms, content creators, marketers, etc.), since such threats might limit consumer adoption or trigger political intervention.

The term "Metaverse" first appeared in the classic science fiction book "Snow Crash" written by Neal Stephenson in 1992, wherein he conceptualised "metaverse" as a community of virtual, lifelike avatars that assemble in true-to-life 3D virtual reality settings (Joshua, 2017; Dwivedi et al., 2022a, 2023a). Informally defined as the meeting point between the physical and virtual worlds, the metaverse is still partially in the realm of speculation because it is in its early stages and has not been fully defined (Ball, 2022). Given the steep proliferation of technology in our lives, we live in a network. Be it communication, e.g., telephony, text message exchange (WhatsApp or SMS), participating in social media or going about doing usual tasks, e.g., paying by credit card, entering the airport by QR code scan of our boarding pass, writing, and sharing on blogs. We are leaving multiple digital traces for each interaction and more. Gartner (2022) predicted that 25% of users would spend at least one hour per day in the metaverse by 2026. The scale and speed with which this data is being amassed and interlinked have given rise to computational social science. The metaverse, given its base, is deeply rooted in enabling technologies such as blockchain, augmented reality, virtual reality, etc., and would rely heavily on Human–Computer Interface (HCI). The extant literature has discussed the seamless opportunities which Metaverse offers to the business to engage and reach consumers in different domains such as fashion, retail, tourism, hospitality, advertising, branding etc. (Dwivedi et al., 2022a, 2023a; Hollensen et al., 2022; Kim, 2021; Joy et al., 2022; Buhalis et al., 2022; Gursoy et al., 2022) and consumers. Despite the many opportunities that the metaverse provides, an increasing number of incidents show that the platform undoubtedly has a "dark side".

The infrastructure that supports the metaverse, comprising both traditional Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT), comprises a wide range of technologies that manage component sensing, physical interconnections, and interactions. While most IT protocols can be made secure, there are no design guidelines for information security and privacy in OT. Bad actors will therefore be able to thwart commercial transactions by stealing or changing the goods, the service, or the intellectual property (IP), stealing or diverting the buyer's funds, eavesdropping, or manipulating the transactions that may be happening between a seller and a buyer.

The metaverse is the next generation internet—a shift from 2 to 3D ways of consuming information by seamlessly integrating with our physical and virtual lives to create real-time immersive experiences. The development of the metaverse will be bolstered by the advancement and adoption of essential technologies, including 5G communication, extended reality (AR/VR), artificial intelligence, spatial computing, blockchain, and digital twins.

In the metaverse, we will live, connect, play, learn, earn, and work in a fundamentally new way. In essence, the metaverse humanizes technology by allowing humans to interact and perceive the digital world.

In the holistic and democratic vision, the metaverse is a collection of interoperable, decentralized, spatial and persistent immersive virtual worlds that allow people to take control of their data and digital assets. This means people can move their avatars and digital assets such as clothes and collectibles from one virtual world to another.

The metaverse is still in its infancy, and there are many questions and concerns regarding user protection and criminal activities. History has shown humanity that the advent of new technologies will provide new attack vectors for bad actors. Question: Is there much we have learned from history?

Over the past two decades, the proliferation of digital technologies has had a significant impact on the business and social environment, leading to the emergence of electronic space and new geography (Li et al., 2010). Metaverses promised to extend the choice users have when it comes to electronic spaces not just quantitatively, but also qualitatively. Free from the burdens of the physical world, metaverses could enhance social inclusion opportunities by opening access to diverse spaces and communities in an immersive manner (Papagiannidis et al., 2008). Digitally transporting users to different worlds is a challenging proposition, though, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. In the physical world, Burchardt et al (1999) consider individuals as socially excluded if they are geographically resident in a society, cannot participate in the normal activities of citizens in that society, and would like to participate, but are prevented from doing so by factors beyond their control. Compared to typical web-based solutions, accessing metaverses can be a more complex process that requires more ICT resources. Similarly to how physical transportation from one space to another may require a car or public transport, entering the metaverse can require specialised hardware and premium services that may not be possible to reuse across metaverses due to interoperability issues. So, access can be an issue before one can actually enter the metaverse. Even if one had access to the resources required and had the skills to operate such devices, wearing headsets for a long period of time can be tiring. Also, unless hardware designs consider more actively diverse groups of users who may have very different accessibility needs, many users could be left out. It is important to consider designing accessible and inclusive technologies that can underpin immersive environments as they empower users with new information and experiences without the limitations pertaining to the physical environment (Zallio & Clarkson, 2022). It is an oxymoron that the technologies and designs that promise to lift the limitations of the physical environment can impose obstacles of their own.

In addition to the above, the synchronous and involved nature of interactions in metaverses means that temporal barriers can also limit participation. Social inclusion is not just a matter of overcoming constraints of space, but also overcoming these constraints at particular moments of time so as to gain access to the informal networks of work, leisure, friendship, and family (Cass et al., 2005). This space–time access challenge can be further exacerbated by the limitations that having to use specialised hardware poses. Even if one had such hardware, one could only join a metaverse from the location where the hardware was available. Such “metaverse terminals” may be opening up new worlds, but only from specific physical locations, effectively limiting users. The alternative would be for users to carry such hardware with them, which is likely to be a major inconvenience, if at all possible.

Of course, on one hand it could be argued that hardware will improve over time and such limitations will be eventually addressed. Hardware will also become more affordable. Although the above may be true, such developments are likely to take many years. Providers could focus on early adopters and create worlds that focus on them as opposed to the majority of the potential users in the long term. Similarly, from the user end, during such a period metaverse spaces and communities will be shaped only by those who could actually access them. Those excluded via other channels, who could have found an alternative inclusion route to communities and activities of interest, will remain excluded. Effectively, a technological breakthrough that could have contributed to reducing exclusion could potentially exacerbate existing (or create new forms of) social exclusion (Andrade & Doolin, 2016). On the other hand one could also argue that specialised hardware is not always required for accessing metaverses. In some cases, access can be achieved by using a web browser on personal computers or via an app on mobile phones. Such an approach could in fact lower access barriers. Still, the experience would be radically different. If one were to reverse and push the argument and consider simpler ways of accessing metaverses that sacrifice three-dimensional immersion in favour of access and participation, then why do we need metaverses to start with? One could use the analogy between having to use a slow versus vs a fast broadband connection to access the Internet to put this in perspective. The user can still access the service, but the experience can be very different.

When referring to online technologies (such as social media or online gaming) with regards to wellbeing, discussions often revolve around addiction. This is surprising as wellbeing, as a broader concept, is not related to the absence of an undesirable state (Vanden Abeele, 2021). As such it is important to consider digital wellbeing more widely. To this end, Vanden Abeele (2021, p. 938) defines digital wellbeing as “2022, p. 5). Such circumstances are not new, and being active on social networking sites can have such an impact on users. Being immersed in metaverses and having direct interactions that go beyond written forms of abuse can take things to a completely new level. Metaverses not only inherit many of the dark side aspects of social media (Baccarella et al., 2018a subjective individual experience of optimal balance between the benefits and drawbacks obtained from [mobile] connectivity. This experiential state is comprised of affective and cognitive appraisals of the integration of digital connectivity into ordinary life.” The immersion and flow that metaverses can develop may make finding a balance between experiencing maximal controlled pleasure and functional support, while maintaining control and avoiding functional impairment, a challenging one. In fact, such a balance can be easily disrupted by exogenous factors that are beyond a user’s remit. Unlike most Internet applications that users have experienced, such as web browsing or shopping online, metaverses are supposed to be social spaces that encourage direct user-to-user interaction. “The excessive noise, overwhelming information, behavioural, verbal or visual harassment can lead to a variety of emotions such as fatigue, depression or embarrassment, which in turn could lead to a loss of self-confidence or even consequences of greater impact for the user.” (Zallio & Clarkson, ), but extend and magnify them.

To make matters worse there are limited ways one can protect one’s avatar and actual self from such an effect. User behaviours in metaverses can be difficult to monitor and regulate and consequently there is often little to prevent users from acting in an offensive manner. Even defining “anti-social” can be problematic as the ethics and norms applying in virtual worlds are not necessarily the same as those in the real one (Papagiannidis et al, 2008). Such behaviour can be detrimental to one’s digital wellbeing and potentially their overall wellbeing. Virtual worlds may be virtual, but actions in them can have very real and tangible consequences. This is why it is often more appropriate to refer to virtual worlds as synthetic worlds, in order to highlight the fact that these worlds are products of human actions (Malaby, 2006). Such connections to the real world should not be treated as an attempt to stifle freedom of expression and to break the “magic circle”, but as a way of acknowledging that the two need to exist harmoniously. Castronova (2005, p.147) considers the boundary between the synthetic world and real one to be a porous membrane: “2022; Bojic, 2022we find human society on either side of the membrane, and since society is the ultimate locus of validation for all of our important shared notions – value, fact, emotion, meaning – we will find shared notions on either side as well”. Still, on the synthetic side the rules are created and enforced by the companies that created the metaverse and have a commercial interest in maintaining it. Whether such interests are aligned with user interests is open for debate. Social media platforms are testimony to the challenges companies and users face when it comes to issues such as freedom of speech, identity management or harassment. This is not to say that tech-companies should not seek commercial success. Quite the contrary. This is important as otherwise no metaverse could be sustainable. It is a statement of the need to identify ways in which financial sustainability and success will not be achieved at the expense of the wellbeing of individuals and communities. Just as it is often the case that the companies encourage users to co-create by creating the content they enjoy in metaverses they should also consider involving them in the governing and shaping of the worlds themselves, including deciding how porous the magic circle should be.

XR refers to environments that combine the real and the virtual. VR, AR and mixed reality (MR) are all examples of this. This technology, while constantly evolving, is not necessarily new, nor are the opportunities and risks that come with it. When done correctly, XR can push reality to its limits, resulting in new experiences that, while artificial, fuel real and lasting memories. New XR developments make our virtual worlds more immersive. Furthermore, remarkable technologies make metaverse spaces feel more and more natural. Unfortunately, it's not just the surroundings that feel authentic; it's also the experiences. As a result, emotional reactions intensify in XR environments and can elicit the same internal nervous system and psychological responses as unpleasant real-life interactions. At first glance, XR may appear to be your typical sci-fi innovation, and it's easy to get caught up in the novelty. However, the true impact of these experiences is determined by how they make people feel. This makes them both valuable and dangerous because there are few rules, and it's hard to police these platforms effectively. By highlighting the issue of harassment in the metaverse, we will attempt to understand how the metaverse has the potential to exacerbate toxicity online.

The metaverse has a long history of evolution, but it has recently gained attention from businesses across all sectors. While the growth in interest in the metaverse has been phenomenal and studies have dissected the metaverse into multiple dimensions, its exploration of the dark side remains less explored. The vices of metaverse can be divided into the following categories.

The online world is getting transformed with the advent of metaverse-based platforms (Dwivedi et al., 2022a). The metaverse, despite its virtues, has several dark side dimensions. The cognition and awareness of these negative facets would aid in building appropriate checks and would go a long way in seamlessly managing metaverse-based platforms. There is a need for organizations to align the conceptualization, implementation, and database usage of their metaverse platforms with the legal provisions of the state. Firms must have clarity that the metaverse is a medium to reach out to its stakeholders in an efficient manner and not an end itself. The focus of the service or product should be providing a superior customer experience where the technology is just an enabler (Ramasundaram et al., 2023). The deployment of hardware and software as an integral part of the metaverse environment, at times, takes away the level-playing field that digital marketing brought to startups and medium enterprises against the cash-rich larger conglomerates. There have been several incidences of bullying and assault on the metaverse platforms (Table 3). The regulation of the metaverse by a neutral body is an open question. It would help to adjudicate and regulate any reported incidents of bullying, fraud, and violence by the avatars on the platform. There should be a provision that the things that are unlawful in the real world, like advertisements of guns and prohibited drugs, should also be a punishable offense in the metaverse platforms.

The Metaverse refers to a future of digital media dominated by VR and AR that will involve a significant shift from activities in the physical world to virtual worlds. The eventual metaverse, if it ever exists, will be a persistent virtual world users can enter and exit at will and include a wide variety of activities, ranging from commerce to theatre to exercise to gaming. Each domain that the metaverse appropriates has already a myriad of issues and problems, and these are likely to be replicated and potentially amplified in the metaverse. When considering the dark side of the metaverse, governance entities need to begin grappling with the consequences of what will happen if even a fraction of the metaverse vision comes to pass. The metaverse is simultaneously a return to an old-fashioned understanding of digital media and an ambitious futuristic vision which brings several new issues to the table. The metaverse is also an object that in many forms already exists. Much of the groundwork has already been established to understand what a metaverse might mean for many parts of our lives (Evans et al., 2022). There are numerous disconnected digital spaces in which people can engage in isolated practices, which the metaverse will look to join up into a unitary experience.

The metaverse will need to be a space for social interaction. It is hardly surprising that the company behind the world’s largest social network Facebook—Meta is leading the charge to the metaverse. Since the emergence of Friendster more than 20 years ago, social networks have been transplanting many everyday social functions and activities from ‘meatspace’ to a digital space for interaction. The creation of an experiential and virtual world that can be embodied by the user is a logical next step in the social media experience. As is only too well known, existing social media environments bring a host of issues to the metaverse experience: the exploitation of users in the name of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2018); the death of privacy (Fuchs, 2015); the manipulation of voters in 2016 (Cadwalladr & Graham-Harrison, 2018); addiction (Hou et al., 2019); a nihilistic attitude to the world (Gertz, 2018); boredom in the name of neoliberalism (Kingwell, 2019); an interface designed to make us sad (Lovink, 2019) and many other issues far too numerous to list further. Early steps to transplanting social interaction in metaverse-like environments have raised new issues. In VR, applications like VRChat equally provide an indication of how worlds like Meta’s Horizons (the company’s much hyped social VR platform) might be experienced. At the same time, these worlds also tell us something important about how metaverses may be experienced. The kinds of behaviour commonly seen in VRChat and other worlds (characterized by low-level trolling to serious infringements on personal space in VR and sexual harassment), raise serious questions for the social experience of the metaverse if the issues seen in other social worlds become endemic to an all-encompassing digital world. Crawford and Smith (2022) report that VRChat’s lax rules has allowed children into ‘virtual strip clubs’. As early as 2016, Jordan Belamire reported being groped in VR when using the social VR gaming application QuiVr on the HTC Vive (Belamire, 2016). Recently, Basu (2021) detailed how the avatar of a female beta tester was groped on Meta’s Horizons platform. The induced immersion, presence and embodiment can make the experience much more painful for the victims of malicious behaviour. While avatar bodies cannot physically hurt another avatar, the perceived physicality may carry a greater threat to a user than a tweet or comment (Bailenson, 2018, p. 202).

Much like social media, digital games have a long and rich history of sustained presence as both cultural artefacts and for players of games. The notion of shared, continuous gaming experiences with other players has become an important aspect of contemporary gaming. Accordingly, the online game industry is a lucrative business, and customer loyalty over time is critical. Understanding how games maintain players’ presence is therefore important as a precursor to understanding how Meta may do this with the metaverse. Games and gaming will be critical in establishing what people will do in the metaverse. It is in this light that gaming worlds may become fascinating indicators of what kind of place the metaverse would be for all. From console games online to MMORPGS, there are significant questions about the metaverse that are raised by a critical evaluation of gaming. David Sudnow (1983), when describing videogames, noted that games depict microworlds where an augmented version of the player has bodily interaction with the game. A game player engages; in an embodied manner; a game player is part of the game. This is exactly what is desired from the metaverse – engagement distributed across the body. The many digital worlds are incredibly close to the form that the metaverse will take embodied, active spaces where augmented individuals interact fully with a digital environment. The mission of the metaverse is much like McKenzie Wark’s (2009) argument that the ideological consequence of games is to transform reality into a totalizing game space. While games clearly point to several things that the metaverse should and needs to do, there are also aspects of digital games which are going to be deeply problematic. The notion of playbour (Goggin, 2011; Kücklich, 2005) – playing for free or paying to play and that labour being leveraged for profit – will likely be embedded in the metaverse. The gaming industry is often characterised as a toxic, hyper-masculine culture. Anthropy (2012, p. 7) argued that game publishers perpetuate a dangerous cycle by repeatedly creating games for young men already entrenched in the existing culture of games. This culture would not be conducive to inclusivity in the metaverse. For Humphreys (2019 , p. 837), the gaming industry is diminished by misogyny, making it risk adverse and marginal which is not where Meta needs to be as a company. Meta will also need to challenge some dominant ideas and ideological constructions in games. According to Chess (2017) the idea of ‘player one’ is a male, white, affluent, able-bodied, and heterosexual consumer of commercial releases. Player two is a woman that enjoys mobile games. This would not be a tenable position for the metaverse.

The exploitation of users is a common theme which may characterise the metaverse. The metaverse could simultaneously offer users freedom to build their own parts of a virtual world while also exploiting their labour. The impression given by promotional materials is that we shall be presented with a fully formed, fully realized world. In other words, the metaverse will provide a vast and expansive playground for users to explore. The history and business models of the protagonists in this space, however, suggests otherwise. The content of social media has been us; user generated content (UGC) both of and by ourselves, which is then sold back to us in a recursive feedback loop of commodification and commercialization. In the metaverse, we can expect more of the same – building our own materials much as we do in social media, to be used for likes and comments from others that may take a different expressive form but will be for the same financial gain. Yet, there are also nuanced differences in this virtual environment that warrant circumspection. As demonstrated by Zuckerberg’s presentation metaverse in October 2021, that detailed Meta’s VR social platform Horizon, these worlds are not simply built by the communications of users, but more importantly the building of these spaces are physically performed through virtual tools that users can employ to construct and develop these interlinked virtual spaces. Digital environments already exist which illustrate the issues that will arise from UGC being a fundamental part of the metaverse. In particular, the notion of the exploitation of unpaid labour is critically important here. In particular, there have been several examples of copyright infringing UGC which has contributed to exploitative child labour practices and the creation of unsafe digital environments on Roblox (Parkin, 2022). A metaverse might accelerate this on a vast scale.

Being in a metaverse will have to afford the possibility of people meeting one another, dating, forming a relationship and maintaining that relationship. The impact of applications and social media features on dating are already well documented. One may fear the ‘Tinder-isation’ of dating, but the metaverse may make this the de-facto method of choosing and meeting a partner. As Bergström (2021) argues at length, the mediation of dating via applications has led to a privatisation of intimacy. The metaverse will need functionality for embodied avatars to experience intimacy. Whether this is implied or actual will be a function of the equipment available for the user. One can already envision a multi-tiered hierarchy of intimacy, where wealthy users can afford sophisticated haptic systems designed for physical intimacy while basic users have little but their words and the non-verbal communications of their avatar to express their emotions. Less affluent users would be explicitly limited in their ability to communicate with others, and in doing so, experience lives that feel more meaningful. In a world where the perception of the platform and advertising concerns will be of paramount importance and arousal is intensified by the use of VR in particular (Evans, 2022), it is possible that some visions of the metaverse will bring with them a new puritanism around sex, sexual identity, and the expression of sexual behaviour between users.

Technology is a part of the everyday lives of children and young people (CYP), influenced by parents, educators and many other social interactions (Tootell et al., 2017). As the next evolution of technology, the Metaverse, develops, the early-stage activations are attractive and seemingly designed to engage with younger generations such as Z and/or Alpha (Dalot, 2018).

Indeed, technology firms are jumping on the metaverse trend—Nvidia Omniverse, Meta Horizon, Fortnite (Epic Games) and Roblox to name a few (Kim, 2021) highlighting opportunities and efforts to gain increased engagement with younger generations. Brand activations are often aimed to engage in fun, entertaining ways; Oreo introduced “Oreoverse” an Oreo-themed world of games and cookies on Meta Horizons (Baar, 2023), Nike built ‘Airtopia’, a kids’ world in the metaverse, recently, children fashion brand Balabala announced its entry into the metaverse, creating a hyper-realistic digital brand ambassador named 'Rainy’, other kids’ brands, including Hasbro and Mattel, have also announced their Metaverse strategies (Shaikh, 2022) as have Lego and Disney (Solis & Danise, 2022). It’s all fun and games, but there are huge trust issues when it comes to technology companies and children (Restuccia & Tracy, 2023). England’s Commissioner for Children made a series of worrying discoveries during the course of their research, making clear the urgent need to protect children from harms online (Children's Commissioner for England, 2022). Not only did the commissioner find that it is “quite likely” for eight year olds to come across pornography online, but also learned of the “insidious” violent content that CYP are confronted within current digital environments (Turner et al., 2022).

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child - UNICEF UK, 1992) has 54 articles that cover all aspects of a child’s life and set out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights that all children everywhere are entitled to;

In the context of the Metaverse and its vision of convergence of the physical and digital (Li et al., 2022) and its cumulative impact on CYP’s futures; their relationships, education, careers, hopes, dreams, aspirations and how they see their life unfolding – considerate methods of the Metaverse and its integration into the lives of CYP is vital and urgent.

In this section, we first identify main themes that emerge from the contributions in this work.

In this section, we analyze the key darkverse trends discussed in this article and develop some propositions.

Overall, our work contributes to the growing body of literature on the metaverse by explicating the nature of its dark side. A contribution of the paper is to highlight a number of physical, mental and social consequences such as XR devices’ potential negative impacts via a number of mechanisms (e.g., vision problems, increased stress and psychological and physiological discomforts). Our analysis also reveals while some such effects may also take place in the non-metaverse Internet, the effects are likely to be more severe in the metaverse.

The paper also contributes to the literature on the metaverse by explicitly focusing on the adverse effects on children and adolescents. These effects are illustrated with some novel offenses such as ‘virtual strip clubs’ and metabullying. We also contribute to the research on the metaverse by examining major security and privacy issues, by focusing on the operational and underlying technology.

A further contribution of this work is to demonstrate that there are significant regulatory and governance gaps in the current depiction of the metaverse. A related point is that this paper provides important insights into policy makers’ and law enforcement agencies’ lack of preparedness to deal with and respond to criminal behaviors in the metaverse.

Finally, this paper has contributed to the digital divide literature by by documenting how some key features of the metaverse may worsen the digital divide. For instance, our work provides important insights into expensive devices and resources intensive applications that are required to use the metaverse, which may make it disenfranchise low income individuals and SMEs.

The Darkverse has important policy implications. On the policy front, it is encouraging that several countries have started developing national metaverse strategies realizing the potential of the metaverse to contribute to their national economies (Kshetri, 2023a). However, a close look at their national blueprints to utilize the metaverse indicates that they have mainly focused on the positive side of the metaverse. They contain little detail of the implications of the metaverse’s dark side for economies and societies and little explicit statements to handle such activities. While the Chinese government was reported to be studying a registration system for the metaverse, the main goal has been to prevent metaverse users from influencing wider public opinion rather than controlling the dark side of the metaverse in general (Baptista, 2022; Kshetri, 2023a).

In light of the various challenges posed by the darkverse discussed in this paper, nations’ lack of preparedness to tackle such challenges is a key concern. In a 2022 report, the EU's law enforcement agency, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) documented the metaverse’s key policing and legislation challenges (Gibbons, 2022). In the current non-metaverse Internet, policymakers and law enforcement agencies have played catch-up to keep up with the latest developments in technologies and tools (Kshetri, 2021). The Europol has warned against repeating the mistakes in tackling scams, frauds and crimes in the metaverse (Gibbons, 2022). It is thus important for nations to enact legislation to govern the metaverse. Nations should also devote more resources in education and training programs to build law enforcement capacity.

Policymakers also face jurisdictional challenges to tackle dark side activities in the metaverse. Such challenges stem from the anonymity of users and data encryption in the metaverse (Dentons, 2022). Such challenges are even more concerning in a decentralized metaverse that involves blockchain due to the lack of central governance (Kshetri, 2022a). When perpetrators engage in harmful actions in the metaverse, it is often not clear which laws apply and which court in which jurisdiction is the appropriate arbiter (Dentons, 2022). Thus, just like the current non-metaverse Internet (Kshetri, 2021), international coordination is critical for fighting the dark side of the metaverse.

There are also important implications for practice. Many big metaverse platforms have failed to attract users, leading to significant financial losses. For instance, Meta Platform’s business and research unit focusing on VR and AR was reported to lose about $14 billion in 2022, which is expected to lose additional $15 billion in 2023. Consequently, Meta’s emphasis has been recently shifted from the metaverse to AI (Hays, 2023). One possible explanation for the observed underperformance of these platforms is that potentially harmful effects may have outweighed the benefits for users. It is thus important for technology platforms and companies operating in the metaverse to take measures to address potential negative impacts.

Businesses are already facing more demanding customers that place a high importance on measures to protect privacy of their data and ensure cybersecurity. For instance, as early as in 2017, it was reported that about a quarter of medium-sized businesses in the UK were asked by a current or prospective customer about their security and privacy measures (Co, 2017). As discussed in Section 2.10.2.1, since the metaverse is likely to evolve as a powerful sales channel, it is important for companies to take measures to enhance security and protect privacy of consumer data in the metaverse and address other dark side issues of this evolving online phenomenon.

Companies operating in the metaverse have a special responsibility to protect children from various threats and reduce the adverse emotional and psychological impact of the metaverse on them. Among major threats children face in the metaverse include cyberbullying, sexual harassment, a lack of privacy and exposure to graphic sexual content, (Deer, 2022). Bad actors were also reported to groom children in the metaverse and persuade them to repeat racist slurs (Tong, 2022). Studies have also found that children are mixed with adults in several metaverse spaces (Tong, 2022). As mentioned in Section 2.10.2.3, verifying identity in the metaverse is likely to be more difficult than in the real world or the non-metaverse online world. Companies currently lack tools to identify who children are interacting with in the metaverse (Tong, 2022). At the industry level, initiatives could be taken by metaverse companies to develop appropriate metaverse identity solutions to identify children so that they can be better protected from various types of abuses in the metaverse and ensure that their mental and physical health is not adversely affected by excessive engagement in the metaverse.

Finally, companies should take measures to address the digital divide issues in the metaverse. As discussed in Section 2.10.1.2, there are various limitations of currently available metaverse technologies such as the need for specialized hardware and high-bandwidth networks such as 5G. R&D initiatives should aim at developing solutions that can make metaverse offerings more accessible to those that lack access to advanced technologies and infrastructures.