If Meta stays true to its history of designing its products to maximize user engagement I find little reason to believe they wouldn't try to design their product to become more and more tightly coupled with the lives of their users. Maybe to the point where they're not able to function in some important way without it.

The main point being that it has the potential to grow to a point where the life of a user becomes inseparable from a 'Metaverse'. Whether you call this 'virtual' or a 'simulation' seems moot.