Superman Isn’t Always a Hero:
Reasons why we may not be (emotionally) ready for virtual reality
Everyday escapism
The average American spends at least 12 hours and 56 minutes per week fantasizing about an alternate life. That’s 52 hours a month, 624 hours a year spent imagining ourselves as different people living different lives [5]. While it is not uncommon to ponder about a life other than our own, our imagination may lead us to fall into the depths of escapism — a “mental diversion” from the more unpleasant and/or tedious aspects of our own realities.
Technology has made it increasingly easier to escape our lives and even develop ones that differ from our present reality. Social media gives us the opportunity to curate slightly better versions of ourselves and showcase a specialized persona to a select audience. We can binge away hours on entertainment streaming sites that serve us media on demand. And now, virtual reality has become increasingly accessible to the average consumer, giving us the ability to interact with a hyper-realistic world where we can mentally and (seemingly) physically depart from the present reality into universes where we can fly, kill zombies, and travel unboundedly.
Into a new universe
Virtual reality has a history that reaches back even before the early 1800s, starting with the first headset by Ivan Sutherland (pictured below), and has now developed into more mainstream and accessible options offered by companies such as Google, Oculus, and Sony.
At first glance, this is exciting — the ability to “transport” ourselves to alternate universes has always only been the premise of a science fiction novel. With VR, the future seems unbounded. Motivated by these prospects, developers have been working to make virtual reality increasingly immersive by implementing skeuomorphic designs, highly sensitive haptic cues, and other visual and audio adjustments, making our virtual experiences as realistic as possible.
How do we develop presence in a VR experience? How do we minimize simulation sickness and ocular-vestibular mismatch? One of the major goals of VR, like many other technologies, has been to make the user experience more accessible, seamless, and efficient — all of which is important and has the opportunity to grant us a whole new realm of technological possibilities. However, these rapid technological advances simultaneously send me into an apprehensive spiral. Indeed, with the right technology, we can slowly eliminate motion sickness and other sensory discomforts, allowing us to be in these worlds for hours upon hours. But is this really what we want — greater accessibility to longer periods of VR usage? Is the entertainment that comes with VR worth its possible risks? How truly cognizant are we as users about the ways we use (and perhaps misuse) the power that comes with technology?
What are the risks, and who’s to blame?
The question of whose “responsibility” it is to ensure that VR is not used maladaptively isn’t so clear. Developers must be aware of the possible risks of VR misuse, but at the end of the day, it’s up to the user on how they interact with the platform. Thus, I think it is important that we both take a step back to truly consider the ramifications of virtual reality’s soon-ubiquitous presence. The ability to so easily transport ourselves to fantastical places upon a whim is exciting, but can lead to messy, even dangerous psychological consequences.
Not only does virtual reality present the possibility of over-indulgence in escapist behavior, it may also have cognitive consequences in the ways we perceive ourselves. We use VR to interact in a realistic space that is all still somewhat under our control, giving us an almost
“God-like” sense of agency. With this comes the risk of a blurred distinction between who we are in a virtual setting with who we actually are in reality.
This is already a problem in social media, where influencers project unrealistic standards, burrowing themselves so far into the superficial avatar that they’ve created for the public gaze [2]. Similarly, with the increasing accessibility of VR, we can become attached to a false reality, an embodiment in a virtual life, that may have lasting effects upon our cognition.
We can all be Superman…?
In a recent study at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University, participants engaged in VR video games where they could fly. Interestingly, those who experienced this superhuman ability were more likely to engage in prosocial behavior to help others after their VR experience [3]. Oftentimes, VR allows us to engage in hyper-realistic worlds that grant us superhuman abilities and offers us alternate perspectives that would be difficult to experience if we were solely tethered to a single body in space. VR may even encourage us to become better people by motivating positive behavioral and cognitive change. However, not all experiences end positively, despite the excitement of these superhuman abilities (who wouldn’t want to be able to fly?) and hyper-realistic worlds.
For example, video game violence has long been studied as a potential motivator of aggression in regular players. Whether or not VR gaming can exacerbate this is currently under investigation. In one study, participants were presented with an interactive scenario designed to elicit a negative emotional experience. VR users, in comparison to laptop users, reported a greater intensity of negative emotional responses afterwards. Moreover, a follow-up questionnaire showed that these VR users also demonstrated more intense negative emotions and ruminative thoughts following the experience, such as harmful and distressing self-related thoughts [1].
Perhaps we see these results because of the sheer intensity of a VR experience. It may be particularly challenging to “walk away” from our VR usage and delineate a virtual experience from reality, simply because of how immersive the experience is. How do we prevent users from having negative VR experiences? Limiting the kinds of VR content that are available to consumers may be a step in the right direction, but VR content is only one contributing factor of the potential risks.
A 21st century hangover
Virtual reality can distort our mental health. The thrill is comparable to that of riding a roller coaster — highly entertaining while we’re on the ride, but as soon as it ends, we feel a pang of disappointment and we’re running back in line for another ride. The fantasy of a virtual world can only make reality seem bland in comparison, leaving us depressed, unsatisfied, and bored. This “post-VR sadness” is becoming widely common, with cognitive and emotional after-effects lasting anywhere from temporary disorientations to more long-lasting overall feelings of detachment.
The reality is, our everyday lives won’t be like the ones we find in VR — what would be the point of virtual worlds if they were exactly like the ones we were already living? But the real danger lies in the fact that we may only realize this when it is too late. Post VR “hangovers” can leave us feeling unexpectedly shallow and confused, and even with the awareness that VR may be the cause of such emotions, breaking our VR usage habits may be very difficult. We’ve already this in our addiction to social media and phones. Companies such as Apple and Android have been rolling out new features encouraging digital wellbeing, such as Screen Time and Focus Mode — but this has happened only recently, after learning the negative consequences of digital addiction. Screen Time was first released in 2018 as part of iOS 12, but by now, most of us are already addicted to our phones, especially young teens [4].
All this is not to say that we are doomed, and that virtual reality will inevitably ruin our lives. Technology provides us with the means of advancing our lives in impactful ways, albeit potentially negative. I raise these concerns solely to remind us to be mindful of our consumption as users, and to motivate developers to recognize these factors in their work. On a brighter note, not all usage of VR is dangerous. In fact, VR can prove to be remarkably effective in assisting individuals who need behavior modification and rehabilitation, a means of encouraging prosocial behavior, and serve as important tools in fields such as education and healthcare.
However, lessons from digital wellbeing should guide both users in how we consume VR, as well as designers in the implications of their work. The adventures of VR shouldn’t dim the excitements of living in our actual worlds. We are beginning to realize that technology is no longer completely neutral, and we need to train a keener eye to the potential risks of virtual reality.
As Don Norman would say, “engineers and designers simultaneously know too much and too little. They know too much about the technology and too little about how other people live their live and do their activities.” We need to prioritize the mind and heart before we continuously improve the hardware.
References
[1] Lavoie, R., Main, K., King, C. et al. Virtual experience, real consequences: the potential negative emotional consequences of virtual reality gameplay. Virtual Reality (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-020-00440-y
[2] Mir, I. A. (2017). Users on Social Network Sites — Flight from Reality and Its Effects on Acceptance of Social Network Advertising: A Gratification Perspective. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 12(2), 99–117. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167883232011
[3] Rosenberg RS, Baughman SL, Bailenson JN (2013) Virtual Superheroes: Using Superpowers in Virtual Reality to Encourage Prosocial Behavior. PLOS ONE 8(1): e55003. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0055003
[4] Screen Addiction Affects Physical and Mental Health. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2020, from https://www.premierhealth.com/your-health/articles/health-topics/screen-addiction-affects-physical-and-mental-health
[5] Swns. (2017, July 03). Americans spend 4 years of their lives ‘escaping reality’. Retrieved November 04, 2020, from https://nypost.com/2017/07/03/americans-spend-4-years-of-their-lives-escaping-reality/
