The Ethics of VR : Inside a Child’s Virtual World — Part III

Children’s Media Conference, 2017

Immersion

In response to the question of how much children can cope with in VR, Dylan Yamada-Rice of Dubit compared this to how children learn about their world, echoing patterns in early childhood development — learning books and literacy as other communication practices. Children learn about their world through their bodies, by exploring particular spaces that start first with their bedrooms, then their wider home space and into their local neighbourhood, school and beyond.

In other words moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar. VR is also a full-bodied experience and the Dubit research has shown that children feel most comfortable when initial VR experiences relate to familiar spaces and themes. As children’s learning through books and TV shows often begin in a small space, usually the home, and then spiral out and VR should adopt similar practice. She went on to mention Job Simulator where children learn everyday tasks that are already familiar to them and can control the pace themselves and compared it to The Blue — an immersive under-the-sea ship-wrecked boat which is a lovely VR experience for adults, but when children were placed in the experience they began to simulate swimming, moving their arms as if they were really in the water. Added to this is the subject of the power of how children were affected by the sound in VR; when the whale appears in The Blue there is Jaws-like suspense music, which layers in a completely different tone and experience.

Marc Goodchild added that the topic of immersion brings with it the consideration of ‘presence’ and how, when designing content for children, there’s a need to apply a sense of rules and sensibilities. “You wouldn’t put your 5 year old in the haunted house at Alton Towers, so how do we regulate best practices for VR and children when there are currently no definitions or industry standards?” It seems that best practices might begin with how to accommodate physicality so that we don’t use this technology with a slap-dash approach.

Fundamentally there are some easy wins that aren’t being integrated into the tech quickly enough, and perhaps that’s because a children’s audience isn’t yet factored in.

Isolation & Concerns

Stuart Dredge bought up the issue of multiple shared experiences for kids in VR. Marc Goodchild responded that, from a Turner point-of-view, there is ongoing research on what social play looks like. Not specifically social networks, but children going to each other’s houses and playing. Dr. Dylan Yamada-Rice added that, in researching and observing social behavior of children using VR there are examples where two children wear a headset at the same time and work together in a virtual world. Also that when one child wears the headset and the other views the experience on a screen, there is a sense of both children working together to figure it out and also use it to co-create narratives. Dylan explained the importance of the social element.

Marc Goodchild stated, “We probably need a new language for this (social behaviour within VR), so that it doesn’t get confused with Facebook behavior. It doesn’t mean that we need to see each other’s avatars, but a more social play. Perhaps a VR headset will be another of the toys that you have when your friend comes around?”.

Cognitive & Sensory Overload

Marc added that there seems to have been a rush to photo-realism in VR for children, however feedback suggests that sometimes the high-end CGI causes a sensory overload. It was discussed that, perhaps more basic animation styles help to keep the experience as a fun, immersive one rather than exacerbate a concern of embedding a memory in a child’s mind that is difficult to discern from reality on recollection. In response to a question from the audience, Mark Mon-Williams added that the human brain balances stability and flexibility.

“It is extremely likely that children will adapt rapidly to immersion in a VR world. What is not known is what long term consequences might be associated with this short term adaptation. It seems most sensible to conduct rigorous research from the outset so that we can be confident that we are not inducing negative long terms consequences (for example, biasing a child to become short-sighted).”

Ethics

Stuart asked how we can be safe and ethical about creating responsible stories and experiences for children in VR and asked whether there was a set of regulations to follow. Marc Goodchild replied that there isn’t yet and there’s not even a best practice criteria. It’s important that we share data and learnings and Marc has been working with Bradford University in controlled environments to understand anxieties around VR and kids in advance.

Mark Mon-Williams added that human behaviours and human-computer interaction research must be layered into the smart design of VR for children. How do we take this wealth of information and put it into a set of guidelines on which to build? There’s little doubt that VR will be an absolute game-changer, it’s difficult to see an alternative outcome now, but responsible practice is critical. VR has the potential to be fantastic and to make the world a better place, but we need to learn from prior lessons of layering in technology to introduce content in a responsible way. We all have an ethical responsibility to give the next generation the best possible entry into adult life and VR for children is already happening, so how can we work right now to develop the tech to make children’s lives better? How can we alleviate concerns now so that we don’t need to reverse engineer later?

The fact remains that we don’t fully know the dangers of immersing children into artificial environments and pushing their development, and it’s critical that we learn more in understanding the values and aesthetics of maintaining comfortable balance and experiences whilst also safeguarding children whilst also aiding their development.

If you’re interested in the ongoing research that Dubit are conducting into VR & children, email Dubit at: stephanie.whitley@dubitlimited.com

This is Part III in a series that covers the Virtual Reality Thread, Exec Produced and curated by storycentral for Children’s Media Conference, Sheffield — July 2017.

Part I can be found here … https://medium.com/@storycentral/the-ethics-of-vr-inside-a-childs-virtual-world-f49493971d2c

Part II here… https://medium.com/@storycentral/the-ethics-of-vr-inside-a-childs-virtual-world-part-ii-1923c99f8f65