Virtual reality can be a very stimulating and fun experience which can be addicting. People unsatisfied with reality will be drawn more and more toward VR. With time these people will make friends on VR as well as do activities that will replace their real counterparts. Can a persons social needs be met using a virtual reality?

How much time do you need to spend in the virtual world for it to be called over use? When a person starts putting aside real world activities so that they can attend the virtual ones and spend on average 20 hours a week in VR. This is of course a personal opinion and subjective, but I think most people would agree with me. Once a person spends this amount of time in the virtual world and has set real life aside for it, there is bound to be some sort of disconnect between the individual and reality. Whether that be not keeping up with real life friends or not watching the news, therefore not knowing about current events. Is a person like this a help to society? Is this person just trying to have their social needs met? If this persons needs are met on VR will they still help the real world or will they try to dig them selves deep into virtual reality? A person who spends most of there time in the virtual world can still be useful to the real one. As an example, we have a person who works nine to five at an office job and comes home from work to go on VR. This person may be using VR often, but they are still working and bettering the world for it. This is only one scenario, another would be a person who lives with their parents and mooches off them while this person only lives in the virtual world. They consume and use real resources while giving nothing back to the real world. People could argue that even person one is wasting their time that they could be spending in the real world by going into a virtual one. Yes it is true that a person who spends their time in VR is not spending that time creating or helping the real world, but most of society today is glued to their phone and those people are not helping or creating anything either. Going into the virtual world could also be seen as a stress relief, the same as playing video games or taking a bubble bath. Meaning it is a way to improve a persons mental health. I could go on for hours about difference scenarios and how they help or hinder society, but I wont instead ill say that these things must be looked on a case by case basis. Some people might lose touch with reality more than others.

Can a persons social needs be met with VR? I would have to answer yes. VR is only another medium that a person can use to communicate with others. The fact is that there is another real person at the other end of that medium. You share experiences, jokes and awkward silences with very real emotions, just like how you would in real life. The bonds a person makes using VR can be equated with the bond of a pen pal. You feel like you know them, even though you may never meet. Like in real life friends take up time, so when you have lots of friends on VR you may see yourself losing touch with the real world.

To wrap up, VR can make people lose touch with the real world. This does not mean that they do not help the real world but merely spend less time in it. A person can fulfill most of their social needs using VR as a medium, and this is because at the other end of the medium is a real person.

Virtual reality is becoming more prominent as the mediums; Oculus rift, Vive and Windows Mixed Reality become less expensive, reaching to a wider market. With All the new people playing VR (Virtual Reality) there is a increasing demand for content on the VR platform. Drawing the creative minds of the world to create new and wonderful things. Not only will Awesome and amazing art be created, but productive applications such as virtual classrooms and business meetings.

In the future I see classrooms not being held in a classroom. Instead I see each student at the comfort of their home participating in class without having to worry about a commute to school or their parents forgetting to pick them up from school. VR will help kids with conditions such as ADHD(Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) by allowing the student to move around and interact with the environment the teacher has created. Virtual Reality allows people to go to places that they wouldn’t be able to go ordinarily. A classroom can go to mars or walk with the dinosaurs, creating a hands on approach to learning what was once only studied using books and imagination. (1) Studies have shown that a hands on approach to learning increases the abilities of students by 20% while also increasing motivation. Virtual reality is not only applicable to children’s education, but to college or university education as well. Having such a good visual aid while teaching is simply the best way to teach in the future.

With the ability to travel at the speed of the internet, any sort of meeting becomes easy and cost effective. Business and community meetings in the future will be conducted in VR for this very reason. For a business, being able to connect to every branch of your operation no matter where they are in the world is very important. Companies have meeting requiring visuals, showing things like graphs, and pictures of a current project. Usually you would have to call people to a meeting room for this, sometimes having people take plane flights or very long commutes by car. These can be potentially dangerous and costly, which is why companys will choose VR as the new way to have meetings.

The future of VR is its implementation into professional environments due to its practicality and the ability to reduce costs. Businesses and schools of all ranges can be improved with the use of VR. Please let me know what you think about this, Thanks!

(1)
https://educationassociates.com/case-for-hands-on-learning/

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Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton