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Are there any severe health risks?

Razor13
Honored Guest
I am 14 and I am kind of worried about the health risks. Will my eyes be negatively affected. Will my brain be negatively affected? Would appreciate help!
6 REPLIES 6

WreckLuse68
Heroic Explorer
Will my brain be negatively affected?
That depends on what you consider a 'negative affect' is.
When Einstein was asked how it felt to be the smartest man on Earth, he replied, “I wouldn’t know. Ask Nikola Tesla”.

Anonymous
Not applicable
As VR is totally new, it is hard to tell with absolute certitude.
Personnally, I've been using it for more than 2 years now, almost everyday (in average, I would say 2 hours everyday), and I don't have any severe or permanent health issues.

- For your eyes, no need to worry at all ^^. VR is not worse than normal screens (for the record, it uses smartphone screens). The only thing you will experience is visual fatigue after long sessions (which I don't consider a "health issue", as there is no severe consequences to it and you feel it less and less when you get used to it).

- For your brain, there's still some doubts, to be honest. VR does trick your brain. The question is, "does it trick it in a bad way, or just in a fun way?". For now, never heard of any bad consequences on the brain. Basically, it's just an optical illusion.

- Finally, the one true problem you will encounter is motion sickness. Although it's become less of a problem today (the devs now know how to counter it), you may still encounter experiences that make you sick.
But once again, there is no permanent consequences to it ^^. You may just feel sick for a few hours xD. And once again, you get used to it with time : you will grow what people call "VR legs" (resistance to motion sickness).

Hopefully that helps ^^. Also, I'd like to advise you make sure you have enough room for VR : many applications require you move a lot, so make sure you have a big empty space so that you don't hit anything around you (just like with the Wii, for example).
Accidents already happened ; it was mostly superficial, but it's still a reason to be aware.

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
My advice would be to limit your play sessions to a max 30 minutes. If you really have to go deeper than that then take regular breaks. I think the official line is age 13 and you're OK, but every teenager develops at a different pace so take that as you will.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

Anonymous
Not applicable
I wouldn't worry too much about your eyes. Nintendo have a 7 years old age limit on using the 3D mode on a 3DS because the eyes have fully developed by then. Even then they've added an extra year onto that, this is why lazy eye is difficult to treat after a kid is 6 years old.

Facebook's lawyers are just covering their arses with the 13 years old age limit.

As for the brain being affected we simply don't know. I'm personally not worried by it.

Anonymous
Not applicable
I have only ever personally experienced the nausea a couple of times when using non-native apps like eDukeVR to play Duke Nukem 3d in VR.

The only time I experienced motion sickness from a native VR app was the first time I played Lucky's Tale - I was standing, and if this makes sense - it felt like I was submerged in the world up to my chest. It was very uncomfortable feeling and I had to take the headset off after a couple of levels after which I felt sick for a few hours.

Since then I have logged more than 300 hours in VR - and have experienced no mental side effects even after 2-3 hour play sessions. I did ache a little the first few times I played SuperhotVR as it is a very physical game that requires a degree of flexibility.

The way I look at it - if during the last 5 to 10 years of my life I have some latent effects due to VR use, or cellphone use, or the fact that we live in a world where there are millions of invisible signals flying around you at any given moment - well at least I had fun up to that point.

When I was 14 - this was what people envisioned VR would look like:


All that said I would take caution though - and start with shorter sessions and note any weird effects you feel afterward. If after a few weeks of playing you don't notice anything unusual up your play sessions by a half-hour and see how that works.

The following article lists a few of the more common side effects - and if you do a search on weird VR side effects you can find some anecdotal user experiences as well.


If you get a chance - try out VR first at a store demo or something and see if it is something you really want to get into - or start off slow by getting an Oculus Go and getting use to 3DOF VR at a much more affordable cost compared to the Rift (the Rift is actually very affordable, but you do need to have a decent gaming computer to run it which can run a decent bill for sure).

Digikid1
Consultant
Dry mouth, headache, the irresistible urge to run on a small wheel...

LOL 
😄 😛