Benrimoh David, Chheda Forum D, Margolese Howard C
Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
McGill University Healthcare Center, Montreal, QC, Canada.
JMIR Ment Health. 2022 Oct 28;9(10):e40410. doi: 10.2196/40410.
The metaverse-a virtual world accessed via virtual reality technology-has been heralded as the next key digital experience. It is meant to provide the next evolution of human interaction after social media and telework. However, in the context of the growing awareness of the risks to mental health posed by current social media technologies, there is a great deal of uncertainty as to the potential effects of this new technology on mental health. This uncertainty is compounded by a lack of clarity regarding what form the metaverse will ultimately take and how widespread its application will be. Despite this, given the nascent state of the metaverse, there is an opportunity to plan the research and regulatory approaches needed to understand it and promote its positive effects while protecting vulnerable groups. In this viewpoint, we examine the following three current technologies whose functions comprise a portion of what the metaverse seeks to accomplish: teleworking, virtual reality, and social media. We attempted to understand in what ways the metaverse may have similar benefits and pitfalls to these technologies but also how it may fundamentally differ from them. These differences suggest potential research questions to be addressed in future work. We found that current technologies have enabled tools such as virtual reality-assisted therapy, avatar therapy, and teletherapy, which have had positive effects on mental health care, and that the metaverse may provide meaningful improvements to these tools. However, given its similarities to social media and its expansion upon the social media experience, the metaverse raises some of the same concerns that we have with social media, such as the possible exacerbation of certain mental health problems. These concerns led us to consider questions such as how the users will be protected and what regulatory mechanisms will be put in place to ensure user safety. Although clear answers to these questions are challenging in this early phase of metaverse research, in this viewpoint, we use the context provided by comparator technologies to provide recommendations to maximize the potential benefits and limit the putative harms of the metaverse. We hope that this paper encourages discussions among researchers and policy makers.
元宇宙——一个通过虚拟现实技术进入的虚拟世界——被誉为下一个关键的数字体验。它旨在提供继社交媒体和远程工作之后人类互动的下一次演进。然而，鉴于当前社交媒体技术对心理健康构成的风险日益受到关注，这项新技术对心理健康的潜在影响存在很大的不确定性。这种不确定性因元宇宙最终将呈现何种形式以及其应用将有多广泛尚不清楚而加剧。尽管如此，鉴于元宇宙尚处于萌芽状态，仍有机会规划所需的研究和监管方法，以了解它并在保护弱势群体的同时促进其积极影响。在这一观点中，我们审视以下三种当前技术，其功能构成了元宇宙试图实现的一部分：远程工作、虚拟现实和社交媒体。我们试图了解元宇宙在哪些方面可能与这些技术有类似的益处和缺陷，以及它可能在哪些方面与它们有根本的不同。这些差异提出了未来工作中有待解决的潜在研究问题。我们发现，当前技术催生了诸如虚拟现实辅助治疗、化身治疗和远程治疗等工具，这些工具对心理保健产生了积极影响，并且元宇宙可能会对这些工具做出有意义的改进。然而，鉴于它与社交媒体的相似性以及对社交媒体体验的扩展，元宇宙引发了一些我们对社交媒体所关注的相同问题，比如某些心理健康问题可能会加剧。这些担忧促使我们思考诸如如何保护用户以及将建立何种监管机制来确保用户安全等问题。尽管在元宇宙研究的这个早期阶段，对这些问题给出明确答案具有挑战性，但在这一观点中，我们利用比较技术提供的背景来提出建议，以最大限度地发挥元宇宙的潜在益处并限制其假定危害。我们希望本文能鼓励研究人员和政策制定者之间展开讨论。
