VR and Children

What is the effect on Virtual Reality on Children. This is a really important question for me as a VR researcher, but also as a parent.

There is one simple answer, at least for my kids: they love it! They are filled with wonder, joy and excitement, and they just want to pick things up and throw them around.

But the question means more than that. Like most parents, I’m also concerned about the long terms effect on children and whether it will cause harm or affect their development. Virtual reality is an increadibly powerful medium and has an intense effect on people, which means we do have to be very conscious of possible negative effective and be careful about how the things we create might affect people.

Any concerns we have about adults need to be multiplied when we think about children, who are more vulnerable to a lot of negative effects and whose brains and bodies are still developing.

So parents should welcome VR as an exciting new medium for their children to play in, but they should do so cautiously. But that means that parents need to know more about the effects of VR on children. Luckily Common Sense Media, a non-profit with a mission to better inform parents about media, have published a report on VR and children, co-authored by famous VR researcher Jeremy Bailenson (and his colleague Jakki Bailey, who I will mention later). The unfortunately fact is that there has been very little research on VR for kids, and not much is known for sure, but the report is a good starting point for things to think about. I recommend you read the report if you are interested, but I’ll summarize the main ideas.

Negative Effects and Age Ratings

Most VR hardware manufacturers have acknowledged concerns about children and VR and have put suggested age limits on use, mostly 13+ but some are 7+. This suggests that VR is not suitable for children, but there is no real research behind these ratings, so they are based on precaution rather than any evidence VR is actually harmful for children below 13.

Having said that, there are some things that the report can advise as possible effects, based on some VR research on children, but mostly on VR research on adults compared with what we know about children’s developments.

Violence and Aggression

One of the most obvious concerns about children in any medium, not just VR, is violence. Will violent games or other activities in VR make children more violent and aggressive? This has been hotly debated for other media, but there does seem to be evidence that media violence does affect children, at least to a degree. There is no real research on VR as such, but with everything we knwo about the power and realism of VR as a medium, it is very likely that any effect we see with television or video games is likely to be amplified a lot in VR. Shooting a life size person in front of you in VR is a much more intense experience than shooting a person on screen using a game controller.

Physical Effects

Another obvious issue is the physical effects of VR. Virtual Reality can cause nausea, eye strain and other effects relating to the accomodation/vergence mismatch. These will apply to children as much, if not more than to adults. In Bailey and Bailenson’s experiments they found no ill effects, but the experiences were short, under 5 minutes, and longer exposure much cause problems.

Another concern is effects on vision. So far, studies have shown no short term negative effects on vision, but we know nothing about long term effects.

EDIT: Thanks a lot to Dorothy Cowie (who I mention below) for pointing me to this article that describes a study that found some effective on vision and balance after a 20 minute VR session. Great to see that there is now some research in on this and I hope the authors continue. If nothing else a strong argument for short sessions (see below), 20 minutes in VR seems way to long for a child.

The most prosaic physical effect is bumping into the furniture. There can be risks of injury, because people in VR cannot see their surroundings and can easily walk into or trip over things. This is a serious issue, and the cause of the first death due to VR. Children are more likely to be injured as they will be less aware of their surroundings and less careful. It is definitely always wise to supervise children in VR to make sure they don’t injure themselves.

Fantasy and Reality

Children typically find it harder to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Virtual reality feels much closer to a real experience than other media. These two facts add up to the strong possibility that children will find it hard to distinguish between virtual reality and real experience. The report cites some research that supports this idea, including a study that virtual reality experiences were more likely than other media to create false memories in children. Fantasy and imagination is an important part of childhood, and if Virtual Reality is a new way for children to explore fantasy worlds, that could be a very positive thing, but we should be aware that they will be more likely to remember them as real experiences, and the risks this might entail.

Social Influence

I’ve said before, based on a my research and that of others, that social experiences with AI characters in VR can be an immensely compelling experience, that feels very much like a real social encounter.

The mixing of real and virtual by children in VR can be even strong when it comes to virtual characters. Children whose social skills and understanding are developing often develop “imaginary friends” or strong bonds to fictional characters on TV and other media. Again, it seems likely that characters in VR will have a profounder effect on children than on adults.

This is supported by research by Jakki Bailey (a collaborator of Bailenson and co-author of the report). She did an experiment in which 5 year old children interacted with “Grover” the character from Sesame Street, either on a screen or in VR. The experiment showed that the VR Grover had a stronger effect and children were more influenced by him. For example, they copied him more when they should not have in a game of “Simon Says”. At the end of the experiment, they were given stickers and were asked if they wanted to give any to Grover. The children who saw him in VR game him more stickers.

This shows what a compelling medium VR is for children and how strong an effect characters can have. This is, in many ways a good thing, but we should be aware that children are likely to be more influenced by characters in VR than those on TV. This can be positive with educational experiences, but in other ways it might not be (advertising is particularly worrying).

Escapism

Another common worry about VR is that people will escape into VR and not want to interact with the real world. This is a particular concern with children and adolescents as they are developing their social skills.

One important mitigation for this is the physical side effects of VR are likely to make long term immersion difficult, but parents should control the amount of time children spend in VR.

Body Representation

One important factor that isn’t mention in the report is the development of sensory and motor skills. How children understand the world and their bodies is constantly developing. In particular, how their brain represents their body is much more fluid, as both their brain and body develop very rapidly. Spending a lot of time in VR could affect the development of young children, since they are learning sensori-motor skills in a non-real environment. VR pioneer Jaron Lanier refers to this in his book:

Give them a chance to develop basic perception and motor skills within the environment in which the human nervous system evolved, okay?

I’m very lucky to be involved in a project lead by Dorothy Cowie of the University of Durham. That is looking at exactly this issue. One of the most important features of VR is that we can inhabit different bodies. We can be a different race, gender or age, but we can also be a different species, an alien or a robot. If it is done right we can feel as if the virtual body really is our body (the illusion of embodiment). There has been a lot of research on how we accept a virtual body as our own and how different that body can be, but not much of it has been done on children, which is what Dorothy and her team are working on. Understanding how the illusion works for children is really important scientifically because it helps us understand how children’s representations of their bodies develop as they grow. It’s also important for VR because it helps understand the effects of virtual embodiment on children at an age when their representation of their own body aren’t fully developed.

I’m really excited about this project, and if you are too (and you are in the NE of England) you could come and work with us, as we are currently recruiting a VR developer (see the job advert if you are interested).

Positive effects

This post so far has been quite negative focusing on the concerns. That’s because I think it’s very important to be aware of the concerns as we develop VR, and also because I think the positives are so obvious to us working in VR, but let’s look quickly at some of the many ways that VR can benefit children.

Education

VR is a great educational tool, so it can be great for children learning. The report highlights the fact that kids can be more engaged in learning with VR, and how it can help learn many different subjects from maths to biology (including work by Maria Roussou who I worked with at Mel Slater’s Lab in the early 2000s).

VR is particularly good for experiential learning, where children learn by doing or experiencing something as if it were real, rather than simply reading about it. The report talks about the idea of a “reverse field trip”, where VR can be used to take children virtually to distant places or historical events, allowing them to actually experience what they are learning about.

Pain management

There are lots of applications of VR in medicine, but one of the most important is pain management. VR distracts children from their real environment, which can be very valuable if they are having a painful procedure. VR has been shown to reduce the feeling of pain in adults and it is likely to also happen in children.

Empathy

VR has been touted as an “empathy machine” because it allows us to experience what it is like to be another person, to walk in another person’s shoes. We should be wary of overstating this, but studies have shown that, in adults, VR can increase empathy with older people and people of different races. The same could be true of children, though we really don’t know since children’s ability to empathise develops gradually and so VR experience might not have the same effect (though it might help develop children’s empathy, who knows).

Fun

But most of all VR is fun. It is an opportunity to explore new worlds of fantasy and imagination. It is a new way to play games and create art. It can be a fantastic experience for children. We should be able let children enjoy VR, but that means doing a lot more research to make sure it is safe.

What should we do?

So what is the advice for parents who want their children to use VR. The report makes it very clear that research in this area is very limited, so there is little we can say for definite, but there is definitely some advice that seems sensible.

The first one, if you are a parent, is read the full report, what I’ve written here is just a rough summary, to really get the right sense of the issues you should read all the details. The rest of the advice comes from the report.

Another sensible idea is to think carefully about what age children should start using VR. Here there is little definite research or scientifically based advice. The standard recommendation of 13 is probably overly conservative, but I would be concerned about using VR with pre-school kids. I wouldn’t like to give an exact age, since not that much is known and I’m not an expert. I would read the full report before deciding whether your child is old enough for VR.

Limiting the time children us VR is also important, and more so the younger they are. The report stressed that you should think in minutes rather than hours. Jeremy Bailenson suggests that even adults should limit to around 20 minutes at a time and suggests five minutes for young children.

You should supervise children when using VR to make sure that they don’t injure themselves by walking into things. In VR labs it is standard practice to have a “spotter” to look after people in VR and make sure they don’t injure themselves. This is even more important for kids. Supervising also makes it easy to make sure that you limit time appropriately.

Finally, as I, and others have said before, when thinking about VR you should think of it as more like the real world than like other media. That means that, just because you would be happy with your child experiencing something in a film or game, doesn’t mean you should be happy with them experiencing it in VR. Instead, as the report recommends:

When choosing VR content, parents should consider whether they would want their children to have the same experience in the real world.