When I talk about virtual reality or the metaverse, there are always people that ask me about its intrinsic risks of escapism and addiction: “Is it possible that people will prefer to live in a virtual world instead of the real one?” is a very common question I hear. It’s an intriguing theme about which I have heard different opinions and answers, and I’m always eager to know more because I want to have a complete picture of the situation. I care about having a VR ecosystem that is healthy, so of course, I want to know more about its intrinsic risks because only knowing the real risks we may investigate how to solve them.
That’s why when I saw a tweet from “Mister President” Alvin Wang Graylin about a study that HTC conducted about XR addiction together with a Chinese University, I was intrigued by the results. In the graphs shared in the tweet, it was possible to read that “VR gaming addiction tendency is 44% bigger than the one related to PC gaming”, and while the test group was pretty small (20 people), the data extracted from the study were pretty detailed, and also highlighted how this “VR addiction” has different characteristics among men and women.
I asked immediately for an interview with professor Chen (the head of the research study) because I think that it’s important that we all in the community talk about not only the good, but also the possible bad outcomes of VR so that we can find together a solution. In the remainder of this article, you can find my full interview with prof. Chen, together with the graphs from HTC and the Communication University of China that show their findings.
Hello, can you please introduce yourself to my readers?
My name is Rui Chen, Professor of the Communication University of China, Director of Institute of psychological communication of CUC, Deputy Secretary General of the Communication Psychology Professional Committee of the Chinese Society of Social Psychology. I’m well known as an academic researcher in the fields of psychological influence of new media, as well as new media and advertising communication in China.
You have recently performed an interesting research study about the addiction susceptibility of VR. Can you please detail this study and the results you got?
VR addiction is an important basic research in the metaverse era. Our original intention is to explore the characteristics and signs of metaverse addiction susceptibility and understand what steps can be taken to control/take advantage of this digital addiction if it exists. Through our preliminary experiments, it is found that metaverse addiction does existand its influence appears more rapidly and has a greater impact than that of traditional gaming addiction. In addition, different user demographics seem to have varying adaptability to different anti-addiction methods.
According to your results, VR content is 44% more addictive than PC one. What are the practical effects of it? What are the manifestations of this addiction susceptibility?
In fact, this study is just an addictive performance of playing games in an immersive environment in the single-player mode. Compared with the PC environments, the immersive 3d immersive experience in VR will bring more intense pleasure to the brain, and the subjects are more likely to become addicted to this pleasure. The results showed the VR group had a 44% higher addiction tendency than the control group, meaning VR created a habit more quickly, but that should not be interpreted as an absolute negative. If we can take advantage of this property, it may help people to develop positive interests/habits faster as well, such as interest in learning or fitness or social skills, etc.
Compared to other addictions (e.g. social media, gambling, drugs, even chocolate), where does VR content stands for its addiction susceptibility power?
Not all addictions are bad. Addictions can be divided into “normal” [正常, which means “normal, ordinary”] addictions and “pathological” [病态, which means “sick, abnormal”] addictions. “Normal” addictions are when the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, but drugs and gambling are instead “pathological” addictions, which seriously affect the physical and mental health of individuals. None of the trends in VR addiction in this study affected physical and mental health, and in some ways even helped the subjects develop better motivation. From the perspective of individual anti-addiction prevention and control effects, at least the results clearly show that VR addiction is controllable, which means properly managed under scientific control, VR addiction may help people to achieve positive outcomes, such as quickly cultivating new interests or motivating students to better grades.
Some people are afraid that VR users could alienate from their life and escape pursuing only a pleasant virtual life. Does your study say that this is actually possible?
We think there is such a possibility. From the current objective data, VR has a stronger addiction trend vs. traditional media. And this is only under the condition of a single-user scenario. If multi-user social factors are introduced in this immersive medium, the addiction tendency is expected to be even higher. This is why we also took a great effort to understand the effects of different modes of control and management for this research, so we can better understand how to reduce the risk of unhealthy outcomes for future users.
What do you think your studies may mean in our future projection when we all will be able to access the metaverse?
Our research is set up to explore the impact on users of the future metaverse era. It can be expected that people in the Metaverse will be exposed to VR more frequently, which means that our chances of becoming addicted may far exceed the current study. We hope that through this research, we can call greater attention to this risk of VR addiction early, thus reminding the VR industry and content developers to design healthier usage and management scenarios upfront, and even remind regulatory authorities to consider suitable regulatory measures before it becomes a broader societal issue.
You have also studied how we can contrast this addiction susceptibility and make people stop using VR content after a certain amount of time. Can you tell us about this part of the research?
Part of this is to hope that individuals can somehow control their addiction tendency and put themselves in a “healthy” addiction zone. We also found that different prevention and control measures should be taken for different types of subjects to achieve the best adaptability in reducing the risk of pathological addiction.
Given these results of the study, what do you think that VR headsets manufacturers should do to guarantee the health & safety of their users?
- Hardware manufacturers should consider adding built-in systems/controls to enable users to self-manage their usage duration and control the level of immersion based on users needs;
- For under-aged users, the systems should enable parents/guardians to create policies for mandatory protection due to their limited self-control levels.
And what instead can we do ourselves to have healthier VR sessions?
Acknowledging the objective existence of VR addiction, understanding the laws and control methods of VR addiction, and then applying it to virtual experience to enjoy “normal” addiction and prevent “pathological” addiction.
Have you noticed any differences in behaviour between people of different age and gender?
For the most part, adults can consciously get rid of addiction after being reminded, while minors need more external coercive intervention to improve the addiction trend. At the same time, women are more likely to achieve higher self-control than men, and men are more likely to be coerced by the content. Thus system tools will be quite helpful.
Let’s talk about the reliability of this study. Some people complain that the number of participants is too low to make this study relevant. What do you answer?
We are conducting a time-series case tracking study generating a large number of biometric data and survey reports for each subject. After in-depth tracking and analysis, we found that the addiction curves of these cases have clear statistical significance vs. the controlled group, so the findings should attract our attention (p-values were well below 1%). At the same time, we have formulated a follow-up research plan with a larger sample to validate this for more social environments. We also welcome other researchers to duplicate the study if they desire.
What about the other critics about the fact that you are comparing the addiction susceptibility of an old game like Half-Life 2 to a new game like Half-Life Alyx?
We want to ensure the consistency of the test content as much as possible. These two contents are the same series of content produced by the same development team and have a high degree of similarity. In addition, it can be seen from the addiction curve that the VR group and the control group were very close at the beginning, indicating that the VR group did not make the subjects feel more “fresh” because of the new version and thus contributed to the addiction bonus. Addiction caused by “novelty”, the curve should be lower and lower over time, but we see the opposite.
What will be your future studies about?
In the future, we will continue to increase the sample size for the influence of multi-person social interaction on addiction, and look forward to sharing more results with the public on this important subject as they become available.
I thank a lot professor Chen for the time he dedicated to me to explain better this interesting study. What I’ve found incredibly important in his words is that we need more tools provided by the headset manufacturers so that we can fight better the possible “addiction” problems. Especially now, in a moment where VR is largely unregulated but is being used by many kids, we need hardware companies to provide more tools so that children can have a healthy use of the technology. I really hope that this is going to happen soon.
I also appreciated that he was not alarmed by the bigger “addictive power”: he just acknowledges that there is a problem and that it could even be seen as an opportunity if this “addictivity” is actually used to foster healthy habits into users (e.g. use VR to make people stay healthy by doing more fitness).
As I’ve said before, this article was meant to spark a debate in the community about the theme of addiction and VR, so I’m very curious to hear your thoughts. What do you think about this study? What actions do you think we should perform to have a healthier VR ecosystem? Let me know in the comments here below or on my social media channels!
(Header image by HTC Vive)
Quelle:
