Mental Health in the Metaverse
Story by Gabby Kutch | Design by Sarah Stewart
You’ve made it past all the obstacles and have evaded the enemy team. As you draw closer to the goal you hear the cheers of your teammates and the shouts of the opposing team trying to stop you, but it’s too late. With the disc in your hand and the goal in front of you, all you have to do is throw and victory will be yours.
You reel back your arm for the finishing move and- is that drywall? You take off your virtual reality headset and realize with horror that your arm has gone through the wall of your room. This is the thrilling experience that CWU freshman computer science major Liam Weininger experienced while playing a virtual reality game.
There are many games and simulations out there nowadays that go above and beyond to make you feel as though you’re somewhere else entirely, sometimes to the point where you forget where you are.
“I think virtual reality is a great way to experience other situations, other locations, other fantastical worlds,” says Professor Joshua Buchannan, senior lecturer in CWU’s psychology department. This ability to provide immersive and different experiences is what makes virtual reality so appealing to those with social anxiety.
Everyone knows what anxiety is, but what you may not know is just how crippling and exhausting it can be. Anxiety can turn mundane tasks into impossible challenges and the simplest decisions into a mess of overthinking and self-doubt.
For some people, anxiety feels like playing life on hard mode, forced to progress the main quest while juggling dozens of mandatory sidequests all without the tutorial that everyone got but you. Dealing with anxiety or any number of daily stressors can be draining, which is why some people turn to the world of VR for a distraction.
Experiences in Anxiety
Virtual reality can offer a break from the real world in an immersive and controlled environment. These things can be very appealing to someone who struggles with anxiety, especially when you use VR to play multiplayer video games or use the chat room app VRChat.
“One of the friends that I play VR a lot with, he has a lot of social anxiety. And whenever we play games together, he's a lot more open with strangers,” says CWU student Zane Crites, a junior Math and STEM major.
Using VR for social interaction can be great for those with anxiety, it gives them a safe place to talk to others and practice their social skills without some of the worries of talking in person. Nat Nickel, a technician for CWU’s Multimodal Education Center, discussed how using VR can be seen as providing safety for people physically since they are talking to strangers through a screen rather than in person.
It’s a lot harder to catch germs or get stabbed in an alleyway when wearing a VR headset. Another way that virtual reality can be beneficial for those with social anxiety is that you can choose who you talk to. “You have the ability to block people,” says Nickel, “So somebody can be standing right next to you speaking to you, and if you don't like what they're doing or saying, you can just make them disappear”.
No matter how much some of us want to, you can’t block someone in real life, especially if they’re someone like a classmate or a co-worker. But in VR, it’s ok to ignore someone just because you don’t feel like talking to them.
Like many other multiplayer video games and chat rooms, when meeting new people in VR, you can either find someone you really like and become friends with them or just talk to them once and never see them again.
Since virtual reality is mostly used for fun, you don’t have to worry as much when meeting new people as you do in real life, where first impressions can be nerve-wracking.
Virtual reality isn’t just great for social anxiety, it can help with mental health in other ways too. For example, Weininger will occasionally use VR as an outlet after a particularly stressful or frustrating game of lacrosse. “There’s a lot of certain games that are very gory. Sometimes it’s just fun to let out a little bit of aggression at inanimate objects,” says Weininger.
Another mental health condition that can be affected by VR is PTSD. According to Professor Buchanan, there is a virtual reality game called Bravemind that is designed for veterans with PTSD as a form of exposure therapy.
By creating a game that puts you into a combat scenario, veterans are able to relive their past experiences to help them with their trauma in a more immersive way.
“Even the best storyteller can't get people to put themselves back into those situations,” says Buchanan, “But if you use these virtual reality tools that are available, presumably you can get people in an extremely similar situation to how they were and how to relive those situations, with the counselor guiding in a controlled environment”.
Virtual reality can provide a safe space for people who struggle with mental health to explore and experiment without any of the risks or consequences of real life. This is especially true for those with social anxiety who use it as a sort of social outlet and talk to other players.
But other than the low-stakes environment and being able to do things you can’t normally do in the real world, what exactly is it about talking to people in virtual reality that makes it so appealing to those with social anxiety? The answer may lie in VR’s unique ways of balancing anonymity with self-expression.
The Safety of Virtual Conversations
Anonymity can be very freeing, especially for someone who worries about the opinions of others. It’s the feeling of freedom when talking to people anonymously that makes VRChat a popular app for those with social anxiety. “Nobody knows who you are, nobody,” says Weininger, “It’s very hard for someone to figure out who you are, if it’s even possible.
You definitely feel very secure about yourself. So as someone who is pretty introverted, it’s a very freeing experience”. Being anonymous in a virtual chat room isn't anything new, there have been countless ways to talk to people without revealing your identity since computers were made. But what makes VRChat different is the way you interact with people and the fact that you can change how you look to other people.
While some just want to look like themselves, others want to represent themselves differently with fun custom avatars, animals, or even cartoon characters. You can even choose to change your voice to be something different when you’re talking to people.
With VRChat, you can choose how other people see you, and that’s a freedom that is very limited when it comes to real life. “I think what really makes the whole experience interesting is that you don't know what anybody looks like. So even if you don't intend to, you can't make any judgments about who they are. You have to base everything you believe about that person on what they tell you,” says Nickel.
Since VRChat uses virtual reality, it can provide something that other chat rooms can’t: a more personal experience without giving up parts of your identity. By giving you the ability to create an avatar and change your voice, you can have conversations with people online that feel a lot more personal and real than just messaging someone.
With VR, you can express yourself using body language thanks to the controls and you can use your voice to show emotion that can’t be conveyed through text. Before, you had to show yourself on camera to convey body language and unless you already had a voice changer, you had to reveal what your actual voice sounded like in order to really talk to them.
But thanks to VRChat, people can now interact with others in a more expressive way without revealing anything about themselves.
Misconceptions of the Escapism Mentality
Virtual reality is a very immersive experience that can be a break from whatever might be bothering you. Because of this, it’s easy to think of VR as a sort of escape from the real world, but this isn’t a healthy mindset to have according to Professor Buchanan.
“I don't want to use the word escape as much as switch because I think if someone wants to escape their life, I think that is suggesting some underlying concerns or issues that maybe there is some kind of anxiety or depression or other struggles that a person is going through,” says Buchanan.
The virtual reality systems that are sold today were mostly designed for entertainment, and like all entertainment, it’s supposed to combat boredom and can be used as a form of stress relief. And while VR can be used by people with social anxiety to practice their social skills, it shouldn’t be used as a way to replace real-life interactions.
“I find that [virtual reality] has been an outlet for people who struggle with their social skills to find other people like them and feel comfortable,” says Nickel, “But I think it can also lead people down a path where they're only doing that…so they quit having any real-life social interaction…I think it's possible for some people to become addicted to virtual reality, addicted to escapism”.
Virtual reality isn’t a solution to your problems. Like everything in life, moderation is necessary for VR users. You don’t want to get so hung up on the virtual world that you neglect everything in real life. But at the same time, if using VR helps you relax and connect with people you like hanging out with, then you shouldn’t deprive yourself.
“I would say a good balance is to limit yourself,” says Crites, “Have a certain amount of time that you'd want to be in VR, play at a certain time of day, or with a certain time limit. Stuff like that, so that you aren't just stuck in it all day and then you kind of forget about the real world”.
Virtual reality is a unique piece of technology that can be used in so many ways by so many different kinds of people. It can be a stress-reliever, a way to talk to people, a tool to help you, or just a fun way to pass the time.
There are tons of games, experiences, and virtual communities out there for you to choose from, and more are being made every day. The world of virtual reality is yours to explore, just remember to take the red pill and breathe some fresh air every once in a while.
To learn more about virtual reality at CWU and how to use it, you can contact Nat Nickel, a Multimodal Education Center technician at nat.nickel@cwu.edu or you can visit the Multimodal Education Center at Samuelson hall to rent out a VR headset.
