Virtual Reality

7 June 2016

Do you know young people who are huge gaming fans? If so, they probably can’t wait to try out their favourite games in virtual reality (VR). But VR is planning to expand well beyond traditional gaming. This year will see the release of VR headsets from Oculus Rift, HTC and Playstation. The Oculus Rift is owned by Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg has his eyes set on making VR a social technology. Could it be the next major social network?

A new article ‘Is virtual reality the next social network?’ has been posted our 11-13 site and 14+ site. The article explains in age-appropriate terms what VR is and describes Zuckerberg’s plans to introduce VR not as a device for gaming but as “the most social platform”. In VR people design their own  ‘avatars’ – virtual versions of ourselves – and interact socially with other avatars in different virtual lands. These virtual lands could be anywhere in the world and can feel just as genuine as the real world, as though the user is truly there in person. For young people (as well as adults) this is  going to be very exciting, but the article explores some of the potential impacts of a ‘social virtual reality’ and asks the reader what effect they think this could have on the real world. You can use the article as a starting point to aid discussion on the possible consequences of VR, and there are some further ideas below.

VR has potential to be a social space and could completely change how we interact with one another. It can trick the brain into believing the virtual world is the real world and can connect us with others in compelling ways – our VR avatars can mimic our facial expressions and can even have eye contact with other avatars. Starship, a Liverpool tech company, claim that in the near future a large proportion of human interaction will take place in the virtual world. They give examples of people already using VR for business meetings and long distance relationships. 

Whether or not this will be the case, social networking is already hugely popular and a ‘virtual social network’ (VSN) has the potential to be just as popular. Both are culture-changing technologies, and the impacts of VSN could bear many similarities to social networking as we currently know it. The internet has a huge impact on how young people currently form and maintain relationships, so what impact will this have in VR? Will it bring us together more by creating new and exciting ways for us to talk to our friends, or will it isolate us more from the real world? 

There is no denying that VR will have a huge impact on gaming too. Games will be much more immersive – you are actually in the game, rather than simply looking at it. There are obvious impacts here where adult age rated games can be played from a first person perspective. 

Whatever the response, the impact of VR is likely to be both positive and negative and so it is worth starting to have these conversations with young people early on. You can find more information about the possible effects of VR in this Guardian article here and our age-appropriate 11-13 article here.