What is the right age to let kids play in VR? The debate continues…

Today I want to talk again about whether VR is safe for kids or not. You know, I have already talked about that topic in another article, but recently I got to know some new data and decided to share them with you to foster the debate on this important topic.

Inside my previous article, I just told you that according to experts, VR should be safe for the eyes of kids, since VR can’t make your sight worse, can only highlight already existing problems. The only problem seemed to be the kind of experience that you are making your child play: of course if you let little kids play Gorn, they will come out with PTSD and will all become mad as Hannibal Lecter. But letting them play experiences like Henry or Asteroids, maybe for short periods of time and supervised by an adult, could be the right way to introduce them to an awesome technology.

The idea of this article came out when I read this post on Road To VR about Bandai Namco lowering the age limit of its arcade to 7 years and not 13 years anymore. If you are into VR since some years, you surely remember that at the good old times of Oculus DK2, the limit was actually 7 in the beginning, but then was raised to 13 to play safer. Seeing this operation by Bandai I was a bit concerned: inside the article, I read an opinion by Mister President saying that VR has almost no risks for children, apart from the issue of having IPD and shape of the headset that is tailored for adults. I didn’t agree completely, so I wrote a post on Linkedin asking for opinions and I actually had some very interesting ones. Let’s see these opinions and other valuable resources on the topic together.

Mister President says it’s ok for the eyes

Alvin Wang Graylin answered me providing a very valuable set of info. Here it is his comment

Most research we’ve seen from the past had been carried out years ago and with relatively primitive VR devices. We are extremely interested in ensuring safe and healthy use of VR at all ages. Our recent studies showed that advanced VR devices like the Vive actually produce about half as much eye strain as looking at phones or tablets (phone based VR solutions did not produce similar results) . We also conducted a study with younger children from 8-12 in cooperation with the Beijing Children’s hospital and found that for younger children the impact on eyesight was also similar to using tablets for the same period. In fact, 20% of the subjects improved their vision after using VR for an hour vs less than 10% for the tablet group. Most stayed the same. The small % that had a slight reduction in acuity recovered in the same period as tablets. Overall the users with the biggest issues were with the size/fit/IPD of headsets as they were not designed for younger users. We recently released the VRQ app on Viveport, Oculus and Gear, and are gathering data on nausea sensitivity across age group and between sexes. Hope to have more to share there soon.

Basically, the results of the research of HTC is that looking inside a VR headset is not worse than using a tablet for kids from 8 to 12 years. This research is very interesting since it seems to confirm that for kids of 7+ years old, virtual reality is a safe technology, at least for their eyes (remember to not let them play Gorn!).

Of course, doing the devil’s advocate, we’re talking about a research made by HTC, so a company that sells headsets, that has so all the interest to say that VR headsets are completely safe. But it is also true that if a company like HTC let kids play VR and then those kids have eyesight problems and their parents sue the company, HTC would probably bankrupt… so it has also all the interest to not let its users have permanent health issues.

Regarding the VRQ app quoted at the end, it is a VR experience invented by Mister President that tries to foster discomfort in you, to understand what is your motion sickness limit. I invented a similar game months ago (do you remember it?) when Max and I were trying to do something together… but then we abandoned the project because the vomiting game was not funny. And in fact, HTC has not made it to be funny, but to profile the motion sickness thresholds of the various categories of users, so that to offer more comfortable experiences in the future. From these data, it will be possible to get very interesting statistics.

Kisco Jimenez says it is not ok for the eyes

Another interesting comment on my post has been this one:

Neither Htc nor Oculus nor Sony have done studies of how Vr affects the human brain, we have done them and the result is the following:

1. the vision of a child is not fully formed until 7 or 8 years, as well that the Vr could atrophy a part of its formation
2. our vision is designed for a single image captured by both eyes however in the Vr our brain has to interpret two images at a time
3. the vision is prepared for Medium and long distance, however in Vr micro distances are experienced short distances, in children can cause quite atrophy with continued use in children.

Investigation for Kisco Carmona and Jimenez Business Group

From this comment, that is based on research studies as well, it seems that actually it is better not to let kids play virtual reality until they are 7 years old. The vision is not fully formed, so altering the vision process of a child for a long time can create permanent issues in them: Kisco talks about atrophies of some parts of the eyes. If the results of this study are confirmed, those means that it is better to keep your small children away from virtual reality. This means that if they are littler than 7 years, you had better to not put a VR headset on their heads for a long period of time.

It is interesting to notice that the study of Mister President has been conducted exactly from children of 8+ years, so the two studies are not in contradiction.

Wikipedia says that it may be not ok for motion sickness

When I’ve written my article on motion sickness, I highlighted how according to various studies, motion sickness raises until a person reaches 13 years of age and then decreases. So, children that have less than 13 years may be more susceptible to motion sickness. This means that if you make a younger guy or girl try VR, you had better use a very comfortable experience and not something nausea-inducing as BBC’s Home.

The Guardian says to be careful

In a very controversial article, The Guardian published a study of the Leeds University that highlighted how VR can have actual consequences for children of the range 8-12 years old, exactly the range Mister President was talking about:

In their study, the Leeds team – led by Faisal Mushtaq, an expert in human performance research – looked at 20 children aged between eight and 12 as they played a 20-minute game that involved immersing themselves in a virtual reality world. The children were examined after the game.

The researchers found no child experienced serious deterioration in their eyesight. However, in two cases their stereo-acuity – the ability to detect differences in distances – was disrupted, while another child showed a “drastic worsening” of balance immediately after finishing the VR game. These effects were short-lived but were nevertheless noticeable, even though the children were immersed for only a short time in their virtual reality world.

The article got critics mainly because it was against VR and because the study has been conducted on a very little sample of 20 children… that is not enough to carry out valid statistics. But I think that we have to take those in mind as well: 3 children out of 20 had temporary problems after having tried VR and it is something that we have to take in mind and that requires surely further investigations.

Live Science says to be careful of our brains

In a quite popular article on Live Science, it is possible to read that in some preliminary studies, it has been noticed that VR has had bad effects on the brain of mice:

In a 2014 study in rats, researchers at the University of California found that the neurons in a brain region associated with spatial learning behaved completely differently in virtual environments compared to in real ones, with more than half of the neurons shutting down while in VR. What this means for humans is unclear, but the scientists said it highlighted the need for more research on the long-term effects of VR.

Gotsis said VR could have an even bigger impact on the developing brains of children. Her center uses entertainment technology, including VR, for mental and behavioral health research. She has worked on VR applications for children, but only in highly controlled situations.

Again, we are talking about rats and not people, so we don’t have to get mad because of these results. But it is another study that says that we should care about the usage of VR by children. And that VR has to be used by children in supervised situations.

Jason MacNaughton says to care about the subconscious mind

Another answer I got regarded the fact that our subconscious mind should be “warned” about the fact that we are entering inside a VR experience and this holds true especially for children.

As when working with a client in a hypnotherapy session, first experiences, particularly for children, should include simple audio scripts to introduce the experience. These scripts can also serve as a preparatory measure instilling some safe-guards as well as suggesting a “safety-bubble” to help users filter out moments that may be particularly upsetting. For example, reminding users that this is a virtual experience as opposed to a real one is necessary because there is a part of you (your subconscious) that may believe it to be true unless these precautions are taken.

So, before entering and before exiting VR, the children should be said some sentences that introduce him to the experience and then re-introduce him (or her) to the real life. According to Jason, that is a hypnotherapist, this could help in having a more serene transition from the real and the virtual world and vice-versa. Furthermore, doing this way the child’s mind knows better that VR is a simulation and gets less impressed by the things that may happen in VR (but no, this is not enough to let your children play Gorn…)

Vito De Giuseppe says that nowadays kids already distinguish the real from the virtual

When I interviewed the psychologist Vito Francesco De Giuseppe, he told me that kids nowadays are digital natives: they already start using a smartphone at 2 years, so they understand very fast what is the real and what is the digital world. For this reason, even young kids can use VR:

My professional experience leads me to say that up to 5-6 years old, a child may be confused, because can’t tell completely apart an experience in the virtual world from one in the real world. So can’t tell the different realities apart.

Notice that I’m talking about a massive VR delivery: nowadays, kids are often digital natives, so they already distinguish someway between virtual and real realities. At this time, a kid of 7 years already knows that when he’s playing a racing game on the PC, he’s not driving a car in the real world. So these kind of kids can experience VR, but it must be used “cum grano salis”, i.e. not submitting the baby to a continuous bombing of VR experiences.

Before 5-6 years, a kid can’t distinguish properly what is real and what is virtual, so letting a kid of 6- years play VR would generate confusion in him, because he/she couldn’t tell the VR world from the real world apart: he/she could merge the VR memories with the memories of the real world, could merge the rules holding for the two worlds and so on… this would be too much a mess for him/her. So, to guarantee a proper mental health, it is better to let only 7+ years old children play virtual reality for long periods of time.

Conclusions

There are lots of opinions on the effects of virtual reality on children, but the studies are still too few because performing a study on children creates a lot of ethical, legal and practical complications. We have still not a clear picture and I think that we’ll need years to get to reliable conclusions.

From all these opinions, I mainly got that children below 7 years old shouldn’t play VR, if not for very short periods of time and supervised by adults. Between 8-12 years old, things should be better, but we are not completely sure about it. From 13 years old onward, VR should be safe.

In any case, supervision by an adult is fundamental, as well as the choice of the experience that the kid can play. And some smooth transition between the real and the virtual world could also help the mental health of the youngest players.

In any case, I think that common sense is still the best way to let children play safely VR.

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