In 2021, a user testing Meta’s Horizon Worlds reported that her avatar was surrounded and virtually groped by several male avatars within minutes of entering the platform. The incident quickly became one of the first widely reported cases of sexual harassment in virtual reality. As immersive platforms such as Horizon Worlds and VRChat promise to transform how people socialise online, they also reveal a new challenge: what happens when harassment becomes immersive?

A new space for gendered violence is emerging in virtual reality. Without proactive governance, immersive environments risk reproducing and intensifying the gendered harms already present in many online spaces. VR harassment is not just trolling. It is a form of embodied digital harm with real psychological consequences.

Unlike traditional online platforms, virtual reality immerses users in digital environments rather than merely displaying interaction on a screen. Through 3D avatars, spatial audio, and full-body tracking, these systems create a powerful sense of presence that can make virtual encounters feel strikingly real. Research shows that users often perceive their virtual bodies as extensions of themselves, reacting to events in VR as if they were happening in the physical world.

When interaction feels real, harm can feel real too. Harassment enacted through avatars, such as virtual groping or sexual assault, can therefore be experienced as deeply violating. These dynamics highlight a central governance challenge in immersive environments. The answer may lie less in stricter moderation than in redesigning the virtual spaces where these interactions occur.

Harassment in Immersive Environments

Documented incidents of harassment in VR range from verbal abuse to simulated sexual violence, including non-consensual touching between avatars and coordinated harassment campaigns. Surveys suggest that nearly half of women using social VR platforms have experienced some form of sexual harassment, often involving avatars being cornered, trapped, or subjected to simulated sexual acts.

The immersive nature of virtual reality can intensify users’ psychological responses to harassment. VR environments can trigger what researchers describe as a “phantom sense”, in which users experience emotional or bodily reactions to virtual stimuli. Victims frequently report feeling violated or disoriented after such incidents, with some experiencing distress comparable to real-world harassment. For survivors of prior abuse, immersive harassment can also trigger retraumatisation. VR harassment therefore extends beyond offensive speech; it constitutes a form of embodied interaction capable of producing real psychological harm.

Why Platform Design Matters

These harms are shaped both by individual misconduct and by the architectural design of VR platforms. As legal scholar Lawrence Lessig famously argued, digital systems regulate behaviour through their design as much as through formal law. Consequently, in immersive environments, platform architecture plays a crucial role in shaping how users interact.

The architecture of VR platforms can unintentionally create conditions in which harassment becomes easier to enact. Avatar embodiment can intensify emotional responses when users strongly identify with their virtual bodies. Proximity mechanics and haptic feedback allow avatars to invade personal space or simulate physical contact. Spatial audio makes verbal abuse feel more intimate and difficult to ignore.

Safety tools exist. But they are often too difficult to use in real time. Platforms offer blocking mechanisms but users may struggle to use them in challenging situations, or may need to leave the environment entirely to complete lengthy reporting procedures.

Governing the Metaverse: Safety by Design

As is often the case, technological innovation is moving faster than the laws meant to regulate it. This gap is not unique to virtual reality. Recent cases of AI-generated deepfake pornography—including incidents in Germany that have sparked public protest and calls for legal reforms—demonstrate how digital instances of harm increasingly escape legal frameworks designed for physical acts. Across these contexts, governance systems struggle to address harms that are experienced as real by victims but do not fit existing legal definitions.

Many laws addressing sexual violence define assault in terms of physical contact. For example, the UK’s 2003 Sexual Offences Act defines sexual assault as “touching” another person without consent. Whether non-consensual interactions conducted through avatars or haptic technologies fall within these definitions remains legally contested.

At the same time, European regulatory frameworks remain primarily oriented toward harmful content rather than harmful conduct. Their fragmentation across different domains such as content moderation, data protection, and AI regulation complicates effective governance. The EU’s Digital Services Act, for instance, focuses on the detection and removal of illegal content and on managing users’ exposure to harmful material. However, these mechanisms are designed for static content, not for real-time, embodied interaction. As a result, they struggle to address forms of harassment that unfold through avatar-based conduct inside digital environments.

Platform responses have also been inconsistent. In several early cases, companies suggested that victims should have relied on existing safety protocols, such as blocking functions or reporting systems, instead of accepting accountability for the underlying design features that enabled harassment.

Protecting users cannot depend on individuals alone. Safety must be built into the architecture of virtual platforms. Design interventions could significantly improve safety in immersive environments. Default personal boundaries, for example, could automatically prevent avatars from entering another user’s personal space without consent. Intuitive safety controls as simple as implementing gestures that activate a pause function or freeze surrounding avatars, could allow users to respond to harassment quickly without navigating complex menus. Moderation systems could also play a larger role. Community-led and AI-supported moderation could enable trusted users to act as in-game moderators who help enforce norms and respond to incidents in real time. Finally, cross-platform accountability mechanisms, including shared reporting systems or industry-wide blocklists, could prevent repeat offenders from simply migrating between platforms.

Protecting users will require rethinking how immersive environments are governed. Embedding safeguards directly into platform architecture would shift responsibility away from individual users and toward the systems that structure digital interaction.

Harassment does not emerge from nowhere. It grows out of systems designed without safety in mind.

In virtual reality, governance is not only a matter of rules but of design. Only by embedding safety into the architecture of virtual worlds can immersive environments avoid reproducing and intensifying the gendered harms already present online.

Written by Miriam Schuller, Edited by Alexandra Steinhoff.

Photo Credit: Michelangelo Buonarroti (2021, June 30) on Pexels.