PSVR for my 11 year old son. Good idea or no?

zaphodbeeb

My son had a demo of (of all things) a virtual reality tour of a house. (Long story, at the build your own home exhibition etc).

Anyway, he's mad into the whole VR thing and is having a birthday soon with the good people at Future Shock VR Arcade playing it seems games on PCs running Vive / Steam etc. Likes the walk off a top building on the plank thing, also into the Job Simulator (!?) etc...

I'm thinking it's likely he'll love it so my questions are these:

1. Is PSVR suitable for an 11 year old.
2. I see that it says 16 on the box. Is this a health / size of head unit / or what type warning
3. Confusing as some PSVR games are rated 7...
4. Are there enough games for an 11 year old to play. Don't really want to drop 300 eu plus on the Christmas pressie to see it get used for 10 mins on the day then never again.

Atomic Pineapple

As far as I am aware, for health reasons the PSVR is not to be used by anyone under 12.

There's a good read on VR for kids here - https://www.livescience.com/56346-are-virtual-reality-headsets-safe-for-kids.html

The games are rated using a standard rating system, it hasn't been updated to handle how to rate VR games. I was talking to a researcher linked to the field and she said they are in discussion about how they rate VR games.

There are physical concerns with letting children use a VR headset, such as eye damage. But the real concern is the immersion and how it might affect a child's development. There's a big difference between a spider jumping at you on a flat tv screen and one jumping right onto your face in VR. In the same vein as walking off the side of a building in Superhot has an immersive feel that none of us have felt before, an adult can easily distinguish this. But imagine a child performing this act during the development of their brain, what might that do!?

At the end of the day, it's all lacking in research. If you are willing to monitor, restrict and ensure your child doesn't become too involved in VR, then it might be OK.

I think age restrictions are to do with the physical design, in particular the distance between the eyes or IPD. If this is not set correctly then it can cause eye strain and a kid is more likely to power on through the pain and cause damage than an teenager is.

Actually the PS VR is the safest of the lot as it has a setup wizard for adjusting to the correct distance, whereas the others simply assume you are fully developed. This article explains it well:

https://www.windowscentral.com/kids-can-use-vr-be-careful

FYI - here is a tool for measuring pupil distance: http://www.trylive.com/demos/trylive-eyewear/pupil-distance

ItsRisteard

Anything that your 11 year old can use to engage with others online is probably a bad idea as it can be very toxic.

You'd also need to implement restrictions as you can watch some odd stuff with VR...