The cost of VR headsets is being used for the first time by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) to help calculate the county’s inflation level.
Following the rising popularity of VR for home use (including VR porn, although of course there’s no official mention of that), ONS included VR headsets on its list of 752 items and services used to record the cost of living. The list is reviewed and updated once a year, to ensure that it accurately measures the cost of life in the UK by tracking the cost of the items in the ‘basket’ of items.
Alongside VR headsets, pulled pork, yoga mats and men’s sandals were among the other items to be newly included in the list for 2025, reported BBC News. Local newspaper adverts and DVD rentals were among the services dropped from the list.
The year-on-year inflation level for January 2025 was three percent: a rise from December 2024’s figure of 2.5 percent. Rising food prices were a major factor behind the increase.
Using VR headsets as a measure of everyday life in the UK may seem out of step with an economic environment in the country that many believe is worsening. However, behemoth companies like Meta continue to make steps to push VR use further towards mainstream use.
In late 2024 Meta released the Meta Quest 3S mixed reality headset, which retailed from $299 (£289 in the UK). The company is reportedly working on a new headset range that will include Meta’s lightest headsets yet.
Apple is reportedly also working on a new headset range, to complement the Apple Vision Pro (pictured above), the company’s first mixed reality headset. Devices in the new range are expected to cost less than the Vision Pro, but still cost thousands rather than hundreds of dollars.
A survey conducted by Statista in the UK in 2024 found that six percent of respondents owned a VR headset. For respondents in the 16-24 and 35-54 age groups, eight and ten percent, respectively, said they owned a VR headset.
The rising popularity of VR porn is likely to have helped VR headsets get footholds in more homes. VR porn companies such as [very NSFW links ahead] SexLikeReal and VRPorn.com have enjoyed much growth in recent years. The latter platform found that hentai and CGI porn were two categories proving particularly popular in the sector.
A changing regulatory landscape
However, the UK government is clamping down on online access to porn. As well as bringing in laws to address the rise of nonconsensual deepfake porn and other nefarious porn or abuse material, the government’s Online Safety Act is being used to introduce new, stringent age verification rules for porn.
New guidance issued by UK media regulator Ofcom states that sites on which porn can be found must introduce “robust” age verification processes by July 2025, to ensure that people under the age of 18 do not access them. Currently, many VR porn sites and platforms can be accessed without any age verification processes.
Still, if VR porn users have made enough effort to get a headset and install the relevant apps, it’s unlikely that they’ll be put off by having to go through “robust” age checks.
So, what are the chances of AI-synced penis stroker devices making it into the ONS items ‘basket’ soon?
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