The Frightening Potential Of Virtual Reality

You may have seen a lot of buzz recently regarding virtual reality and the impact that it has made on us so far. It continues to spread at an alarming rate, becoming more and more popular in almost every aspect of human life by the day. For now, most of its uses are in the world of entertainment, but it’s slowly growing and spreading to other fields as well. This could be great university assignment help because of how relevant, yet ignored this topic currently is.

Now, it shouldn’t come off as too big of a surprise that anything of this much power and this great of an influence on mankind in general could have almost terrifying potential. VR could alter our reality as we know it, transforming our minds to a point where we can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what isn’t anymore. Sounds like the plot to a horror film, right? Well, considering how things are currently going, our lives actually might become one.

Here are the top 5 things that could happen as virtual reality progresses that should really get us worried for our futures.

Why move?

Virtual reality could actually make it so that you never have to leave your couch again. Right now, it has already begun to impact the educational field in a way that field trips don’t even require travelling anymore; you could literally just go to any part of the world whilst sitting in your classroom. This has lessened a lot of exposure students previously got by exploring their surroundings, and has isolated them into their classrooms because they now have even less reason to leave.

• The immobility that already existing technology has caused in human beings will be given an upgrade – now, people won’t even have to leave their place to go somewhere. This is a clear spell for disaster.
• Laziness and lack of motivation, as well as a lot of health risks are bound to stem from something that encourages you to cease all physical exercise. This technology might make things easier for us, but it also urges us to be even more dependent on technology – is this part of the apocalypse?

Appealing to all senses

As VR grows and expands, it is becoming much more advanced. This means that if, before, it was only able to make us experience sight and hearing differently, it will soon develop to a point where we will be able to experience touch through VR. As immersive as this experience gets, there always have to be some boundaries or we might not be able to come out of this ditch of dependency. 

• Virtual reality is said to become more sensory oriented in the future, which means that it will appeal to all our senses a lot better. To a certain extent, this might seem like a good thing, but it can surely backfire if it’s not controlled.
• Too much of anything is bad, and including touch as part of the VR experience could lead to endless disasters if it’s not always in a carefully controlled setting.

Health risks

Virtual reality is said to have way too many health risks to be considered healthy in any way. In the beginning, it was said to be a way for people to exercise easily from the comfort of their homes, but the following are just a few physical dangers and potential health risks that virtual reality brings along with it:

• Nausea. VR sickness is a very real thing. It’s almost never mentioned during promotions and ads, and it’s understandable why – but it’s an actual health risk that a lot of users aren’t aware of before they begin using it. A lot of people begin to feel very dizzy and sick almost immediately after they start using VR headsets. You have to get used to it, but even then, the constant movement of your head, snapping it back and forth could really mess with your health – shocks or surprises from what you’re experiencing could even result in a whiplash.
• This one is a given. In order to give you an immersive, out-of-this-world experience, it actually has to take you out of this world. This means that it has to completely shut some of your senses off from the real world and replace them with whatever is in the media that you’re experiencing. Being unable to see or hear what happening around you could leads to accidents where you could potentially trip and fall, injure yourself or even people around you. This is something incredibly dangerous and could result in sever unforeseen accidents.
• Having a screen a few inches away from your eyes for a long time could affect you in more ways than one. Not only will it damage your eyesight, the constant radiation could affect your brain negatively, which is something that’s often irreversible. It’s not worth the risk if it will cost you something like this.
• This might seem like a weird thing to worry about, but tripping over wires could result in you breaking very expensive equipment, damaging your gadgets or hurting yourself.

Seeing as VR has so many negative impacts the way it currently is, it’s frightening to think what will become of it once a few more years have passed and it has had a chance to progress even further. Should it be allowed to get to a point where it becomes a risk? Or is this just paranoia from people who like to predict the impossible? It could be anything, but it’s always better to be safe than to be sorry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam Sheen is a 33-year-old financial manager with a PhD from the from University of Sheffield. Apart from his field, he loves to write in his free time and writes magazine articles and such, helping even the best assignment writers with improving their writing skills. In his free time, he loves to visit animal shelters and volunteer there.