Project #2 Research Essay


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    Wei Tao Liu
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    Wei Tao Liu

    Professor Jesse

    ENG 2150

    October 13, 2018

    Can Virtual Reality be good or bad?

    Now, virtual reality became one of the most famous topics in society. The virtual reality is an innovation from the technology of the internet, it was considered as another reality besides the actual one, the “reality” inside the digital world. However, it is controversial to think whether virtual reality can be good or bad and furthermore, will it be another “internet”? I think that virtual reality is good and it cannot replace the actual reality, but it can be a component of the actual reality. I will talk about how the internet become a part of our life and how the internet can be addictive and thus, will the innovation from the internet, virtual reality, can be worse or better.

    Before virtual reality come to the reality, we were using internet for almost any purpose, gaming, socializing, researching, learning, even entertaining, so we can see that how diversified the internet is and how much we rely on it. Internet, in today’s society, is one of the essential things we need. In school for kids such as learning and self-studying, using websites for school, such as PupilPath (High school), Blackboard (College). In daily life for everyone to socialize, such as Facebook, and Twitter, and entertaining such as games and movies online. Even for working purposes, we rely on the internet in order to globalize and communicate to do businesses.

    For instance, in one of the readings from course site, “The Design of Web 2.0: The Rise of the Template, The Fall of Design”, by Kristin L. Arola, in page 5, 2. Seamless technology: The death of the homepage, third paragraph, “ Reynol Junco and Jeanna Mastrodicasa (2007) surveyed 7,705 college students in the United States and found that for most of our students, computer technology is a given: 97% own a computer, 97% have downloaded music and other media using peer-to-peer file sharing, and 76% use instant messaging and social networking sites. Their lives don’t start and stop on or offline; instead, their lives are woven throughout—the transition between the two is seamless.”

    From this instance, we can see how much we rely on the internet since about 10+ years ago since now is 2018. In the past 10 years ago, people lived between the internet and actual reality, and the transition is seamless, we can see how the internet become a part of our life. Virtual reality, an innovation from “internet”, can become more influential in the future, but will it replace the internet, or even worse? Addiction from internet already existed and there was a lot of people have similar problems, the virtual reality can be seeming as an opportunity but also a threat because there is potentiality that virtual reality can cause stronger and deeper addiction to people.

    During this age of globalization, we had developed the internet, utilizing it rapidly for decades, and now, we innovated technologies and created advances in a technology called virtual reality. When we see “virtual reality, many people might think about VR gaming, which is only shown in the movies, and never existed in the actual reality, but the virtual reality technology today has become closer to what we saw in the screen. However, many people might think virtual reality is a threat because of the addiction that internet caused to young adults and kids, such as game disorder and addiction in social media, since that virtual reality seemed to be the innovation of internet, so it could become a thing that will provide us more utility but also comes with higher risk of addiction.

    Although internet does cause addictions to people and also could cause further threat, but now we have to utilize virtual reality as to how we utilize internets, such as in the article, “Smartphone applications for immersive virtual reality therapy for internet addiction and internet gaming disorder.”, by Zhang, Melvyn, in page 368, fourth paragraph, “Prior studies have done overseas, in the United States as well as in Europe has highlighted that Internet addiction affects as much as 1.5% to that of 8.2% of the general population.”, which we can see how many percentage of populations that could be harmed by the internet, and additionally, “Based on their findings [9], individuals who have an underlying diagnosis of Internet addiction would also have an increased risk of developing other psychiatric disorders such as that of alcohol abuse, as well as depressive and anxiety disorders. In addition, individuals who have a pre-existing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder might also be predisposed towards to the development of Internet addiction.”, which internet addictions could possibly cause more effects and cause higher risk to users to developed other mental disorder, this may let people think that virtual reality, a stronger technology that can attract more people, will be worse or better off?

    However, from the third paragraph, “The 24 studies which they have previously identified [8] involved studies that utilized virtual reality in the treatment of agoraphobia with or without panic disorder; as well as social anxiety disorder, phobia, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, schizophrenia with comorbid depressive disorder as well as lastly, that of autistic spectrum disorder.”, which means that virtual reality technology could be considered as an alternative to conventional care models for mental disorder from the prior surveys and studies investigated by authors. From here we can also see that how virtual reality can be used as a solution for the addiction caused by the internet.

    One of the main reasons for people to be suspecting that virtual reality could be a harm to young adults and kids because the internet already causes a lot of harm and problems to them, such as spending excessive time on computer, and addiction to games and social media, so virtual reality, a technology that is related to internet, become suspicious. For examples, we see lots of movies about virtual reality games and how they are attractive to young adults, even myself, if there is a “real” virtual reality game released, I probably will spend half of my time every day on that game. Therefore, it was expected that virtual reality may cause negative influences on young people.

    For instance, in the article, “Virtual reality and the psyche. Some psychoanalytic approaches to media addiction”, by Anja Weisel, page 199, first paragraph, “1.2%-4%of adolescents are addicted to the internet and spend up to 20 hours a day online, and that about 12.7% run a heightened risk of internet dependency. According to a Europe-wide study, 14-year-olds spend, on average, 179 minutes a day on the internet (cf. Feierabend et al. 2013, p. 28).”, in this article, the author discussed the aspects of media addictions, the online game addiction that affects children and adolescents, social communication addiction that affects female users, and cybersex addiction that affects well-to-do middle-class men. Then, the likelihood that there is a risk for people in virtual reality to experience the similar issues that there was on the internet, there is also statistics shown that the average amount of time that individuals spent (up to 20 hours a day online), and that 12.7% of them have risk of internet dependency, and that also shown that people spent more time with virtual objects than relating to real people in reality, and giving up on the real life because they cannot control themselves.

    The last article is, “Development of an effective virtual environment in eliciting craving in adolescents and young adults with internet gaming disorder.”, by Yu-Bin Shin. This article is also about the disorder that internet and games bring to people, but the author also mentioned that how virtual reality can help as a therapy to treat internet game disorder using the virtual environment. The author did an experiment of making a virtual internet café, and test two group, internet game disorder group, and a control group, in page 8, “The results indicated that the virtual internet café induced significantly greater craving in the IGD group than in controls. Moreover, the VR-induced craving was positively associated with severity of IGD.”, so that there is potential that VR can be used as a clinical tool for managing game craving.

    In these four sources, positives and negatives of the internet and virtual reality has been discussed. The Internet is no doubt, a useful tool that we can use for many purposes, but vice versa, it is also a double-edged sword, that can hurt ourselves. The virtual reality now is another thing that people are controversial about because it is a higher level of form of internet, before virtual reality, people use computers, interact through keyboard and screens, but if virtual reality comes true and become another famous technology, then what will happen? This is what people worry about, and the four articles mentioned about its benefits and disadvantages. Virtual reality can be used as a useful tool just like the internet, and it also can be used as a therapy method for people suffered in mental disorder…etc. However, there are greater possibilities for people to become addicted because of the precedent of internet addiction, but so far, there weren’t any signs of danger for virtual reality, and it had not been mentioned in the articles, so it shouldn’t be a problem in my perspective.

    In conclusion, I believe that virtual reality is good because we can use it as a tool like an internet, and also a tool in medical purposes to treat disorders, it can be a component of our life, but cannot replace our reality. The Internet already became a part of our life, and it does cause problems and it is related to virtual reality, but I think virtual reality will not become another “internet”.

    Citations

    Arola, Kristin L. “The Design of Web 2.0: The Rise of the Template, The Fall of Design” Computers and Composition vol. 27, no. 1, 2010, pp. 5. Accessed 28 Oct 2018.

    Shin, Yu-Bin, et al. “Development of an Effective Virtual Environment in Eliciting Craving in Adolescents and Young Adults with Internet Gaming Disorder.” PLoS ONE, vol. 13, no. 3, Apr. 2018, pp. 8. Accessed 28 Oct 2018.

    Weisel, Anja. “Virtual Reality and the Psyche. Some Psychoanalytic Approaches to Media Addiction.” Journal of Analytical Psychology, vol. 60, no. 2, Apr. 2015, pp. 199. Accessed 28 Oct 2018.

    Zhang, Melvyn W. B. et al. “Smartphone Applications for Immersive Virtual Reality Therapy for Internet Addiction and Internet Gaming Disorder.” Technology & Health Care, vol. 25, no. 2, Mar. 2017, pp. 368. Accessed 28 Oct 2018.

    Annotated Bibliography

    Arola, Kristin L. “The Design of Web 2.0: The Rise of the Template, The Fall of Design” Computers and Composition vol. 27, no. 1, 2010, pp. 5. Accessed 28 Oct 2018.

    The article “The Design of Web 2.0: The Rise of the Template, The Fall of Design” by Arola, Kristin L. is from Computers and Composition, vol. 27, no.1, released in 2010. I choose this article because it is one of the requirements (need to choose one of the readings from the course site), and this reading also emphasize the statistics of the number of people using internet and computer, and also talks about the people who use computer seemed to be addicted and thus have no transition between online and in real life. Regardless of what I cite from the reading, the reading actually focuses on web designs. The rise of social networking and the shape of Web 2.0 form/content, the design of social networking, such as Facebook, Myspace, and other social networking sites.

    In the beginning, the author talks herself when she grew up in the mid-late 90s, and study designs and coding, discussing that less English teachers know how to code and make programs. For example, the author asked a student studying rhetoric and professional writing majors questions about owning a homepage, but no one answers. This is the changes that Web 2.0 brought to people. Fewer people know how to create websites, but more people know how to use websites as author talks about that 97% of people own a computer, and use it to download music and other media, and how many people use messaging application and social media websites. The author wanted to show us that as we keep using the internet, we know less about web designs and coding, this is what author called, seamless technology, the death of the homepage.

    Then it is the rise of social networking and “the post”, the homepage has fallen because of web 2.0 that it was easier to use, since web users no longer need to code or use any application, instead, they can just type what they want to say and post, like on Myspace or Facebook, to post their profile or blogging on LiveJournal or Blogger, even post photos on Flickr, these are all examples of how “the post” replaced “web authoring”. It was beneficial because it saves us a lot of time just to edit code and make programs, but on the other hand, it also has a little disadvantage. For examples, the number of time that they choose colors, font, and shape less often than they do because the platform offers them design models, so they don’t have the opportunity to create these options for themselves.

    Overall, this reading is intriguing because it discussed how Web 2.0 takes design away while we didn’t notice that this means we cannot create our own option and we are only able to accepter options offered by the platform, so the author tries to persuade people to find a way to re-engage design. I think this reading not just mentioned that internet is taking away our option, but it is also telling us that we should be able to control ourselves like what we want to have in the websites instead of passively accepting what the websites give us, we should be able to do design by ourselves so that we can make the interface and template more clearly and be more conscious.

     

    Shin, Yu-Bin, et al. “Development of an Effective Virtual Environment in Eliciting Craving in Adolescents and Young Adults with Internet Gaming Disorder.” PLoS ONE, vol. 13, no. 3, Apr. 2018, pp. 8. Accessed 28 Oct 2018.

    The article “Development of an Effective Virtual Environment in Eliciting Craving in Adolescents and Young Adults with Internet Gaming Disorder.”  by Shin, Yu-Bin, et al. is from PLoS ONE, 13, no. 3, released in 2018. I found this article in the database. It is about internet game disorder (IGD) that could be treated effectively by the virtual reality cue-exposure therapy, which is a therapy uses virtual reality technology. The author developed a virtual environment that represents risk situations for inducing craving, and asses the effect of virtual reality in cue reactivity. In this experiment, there is a total of 64 male adolescents and young adults joined, 34 with IGD and 30 without (control group), 12 to 25 years old, from a local hospital and via the internet.

    The virtual environment is an internet café, in this case, it is a virtual internet café environment and the participants exposed to four different sets of VR tasks, internet café entrance, and conversation observation, visual analog scale built-in VR, (gaming invitation, refusal skill practice), users interface of social interaction, then experimental procedure of the VR tasks. Each game invitation task was paired with one of the refusal skill practice tasks and after each VR task, self-report of craving was collected.

    In the analysis of the experiment, differences between groups were tested using the independent t-test to investigate the feasibility of VR for experimenter with IGD by comparing differences between acceptance rates for IGD and control group. As the results of the experiment, regardless of the group factor, after the entrance to the café, and being invited to a game will produce higher craving than observing a conversation about internet game. IGD group also showed a higher acceptance rate of gaming invitation to play a game. Refusal skills practice task were significantly lower than those in-game invitation group (for both groups). The results suggest that the internet café scenario is useful for evaluation of craving so that proves the potential of VR as a clinical tool for managing game craving. IGD patient in the experiment have a higher craving and exhibited higher acceptance rate to gaming invitation than the control group.

    For the conclusion of this article, the author discussed that the exposure to various tasks while immersed in a specific environment is important for the patient to increase treatment efficacy, so that shows the results of the authors’ experiment demonstrate that presentation of several addiction-related tasks relevant to the virtual environment (virtual café) can induce craving in patients with IGD. The author discovered that it is important for IGD patient to learn refusal skills that help them resist peer pressures to engage in risky behaviors like internet game disorder because the IGD was mostly because of peer pressure. I think this article is also interesting because the author made the experiment to testify the differences between IGD patient and regular people, and emphasize on that the virtual reality technology could be used for therapy purpose which proves that virtual reality can be something that is good and helpful.

     

    Weisel, Anja. “Virtual Reality and the Psyche. Some Psychoanalytic Approaches to Media Addiction.” Journal of Analytical Psychology, vol. 60, no. 2, Apr. 2015, pp. 199. Accessed 28 Oct 2018.

    The article “Virtual Reality and the Psyche. Some Psychoanalytic Approaches to Media Addiction.”  by Weisel, Anja is from Journal of Analytical Psychology, vol. 60, no. 2, released in 2015. I found this article in the database. It is about clinical practice, that indication is shown a majority of people who use the internet without compromising their real life, most are adolescents and young adults who are growing up can no longer control their use of the computer, and the internet, and are giving up on their real life. So, this can be an example that how the internet can be dangerous and why people may think virtual reality is risky because it is something that can be an extension of the internet and attractive to those people already experiencing disorders relying on the internet.

    From the statistics are given by the author, 1.2 percent to 4 percent of adolescents are addicted to the internet and spend up to 20 hours a day online, and 12.7 percent is in risk of internet dependency. This showed that they spend more time with virtual objects than interacting with real people. The author tries to define virtual reality in two perspectives, by reference to the technology involved, and through the description of the specific psychic experience in virtual worlds. The power of virtual reality in author’s perspective, is strong because people can dip into the virtual world, and lost their awareness and diminished themselves in the real world, which in the end, it will be difficult to distinguish the difference between virtual and real in their mind.

    The virtual world also called cyberspace, the author said it wasn’t new in our history, actually, we always lived in the virtual world. The virtual world in the author’s perspective is the image in our mind. Like in the online game and chat room, they are the place that we can try multiple identities. Traditionally, players unconsciously communicate which each other through their characters in the game, and in virtual reality, the characters are still there to communicate with each other, the identity online depends on the new environment and the social rule, but everything was made up of codes and emoticons such as smiley face, that sound like languages. In our mind, we actually thought that we are inside this “world” of virtual when we interact with others online, but this idea is abstract so I think it is complicated.

    Nevertheless, the author tried to use this kind of comparison to show that it is possible that in the space of online, our-part-selves can be brought into interactions with one another and with other selves simultaneously. Then the author also brought up associative transfers, a transition between the fictional and the real worlds can become blurred, which means that people might think the virtual is real and the real is virtual. This concept that the author tries to tell is confusing but intriguing. I think this article is the most interesting one I read for this project. I used the statistic part to show that people are staying to close to the virtual world instead of actually interact with others in the real world.

     

    Zhang, Melvyn W. B. et al. “Smartphone Applications for Immersive Virtual Reality Therapy for Internet Addiction and Internet Gaming Disorder.” Technology & Health Care, vol. 25, no. 2, Mar. 2017, pp. 368. Accessed 28 Oct 2018.

    The article “Smartphone Applications for Immersive Virtual Reality Therapy for Internet Addiction and Internet Gaming Disorder.” by Zhang, Melvyn W. B. et al. is from Technology & Health Care, vol. 25, no. 2 released in 2017. I found this article in the database. It is about how the virtual reality technology can be used as a healthcare intervention in many fields such as psychiatry, and the increasing number of attempts to combine various other therapies with the cognitive behavioral therapy to make intervention to the adolescents.

    The author highlighted the potential of virtual reality therapy in the medical field such as the neurology and for the pediatrics and mentioned that it has been already utilized for the stroke rehabilitation. These facts were used to persuade readers that the virtual reality can be used as a tool that can benefit the patient like one of the previous articles above. It also mentioned the virtual environment, were used to provide training for the pediatric sedation.

    Many highlighted that since the increase in internet addiction and internet gaming disorders, the rapid advances in technologies has both benefits and side effects which could cause a series of problems because of excessive use. Even worse is that internet addiction disorders can also cause the risk of developing other disorders such as anxiety. However, the only way to use virtual world therapy was using the expensive device, but now, the author has shown that it is possible to use a pair of virtual reality goggles but restricted to be carried out only.

    The author is trying to propose and explain that the smartphone can be used for virtual reality intervention for internet related disorders with low-cost. Therefore, there will be no need for paying more money and more patient can be able to afford the device. The author used Unity 3D and Google virtual reality software development kit to do the intervention. The author basically is emphasizing that it is possible to utilize virtual reality in low-cost to deliver therapy for treatments of disorder caused by the internet.

    I think this article isn’t as important as the previous articles, but one thing that I think is interesting is that there are multiple ways that the author provided to reader that can use the virtual reality technology as a thing to benefit people in medical field such as helping for disorder and how it can be used for more people by switching to the lower cost of the devices, such as the virtual reality goggles and using smartphone applications that provide virtual reality intervention. If this comes true, then virtual reality will be a tool for patient with disorder and also, there will be many other ways that people will use this technology with, just like internet was used to communicate with people in long distance, but now we can use it for chatting, emailing, socializing, gaming, entertainment, for businesses…etc. The author gave a possibility for what virtual reality can be used for, and there are other possibilities for us to discover.

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