Using Immersive Virtual Reality and Media Literacy to Enhance Adolescents' Coping Skills in the Face of Traumatic Online Experiences

ABSTRACT: Traumatic online experiences have become daily stressors in the lives of adolescents. A number of adolescents average 5.2 incidents of negative experiences due to their social position per day, with those occurring online as most frequent. Examples include witnessing calls for genocide, mock lynchings, and having your intelligence questioned. Media literacy education and school-based mental health interventions, where one might expect adolescents to receive preparation for these experiences, are either inadequately preparing youth, or exclude a discussion of the issues altogether. Media literacy programs, for example, only cover social positioning through a cursory lens. Other school-based efforts, such as mental health interventions, may be stigmatized or stigmatizing, limiting their effectiveness. There is a dire need for training in how to critique and cope with online messages in a safe, and engaging environment, free of stigma. We propose unusually innovative and immersive virtual reality (VR) media literacy and coping skills prevention intervention. Drawing on media literacy as health promotion framework, best practices in immersive VR for psychoeducation, and responsive computing theory, we will design and develop the intervention and evaluate its efficacy with a pilot randomized controlled trial. The potential impact is far reaching, including curbing the alarming, rising rates of depression, anxiety, and other mental health symptoms among adolescents since 2020. The project is perfectly aligned with the Transformative Research Award, in that findings have the potential to fundamentally reshape how we educate young people to critique, counter, and cope with online experiences. Given that virtuality is believed to be the wave of the future, with some arguing for a coming “metaverse,” where much of our lives will be through VR, this project will provide a model for ensuring that psychoeducation, delivered by an immersive VR intervention, can meet the unique needs of adolescents. In addition, we hope to usher in a world where every internet user is educated about the mental health impacts of online social interactions and experiences, as they receive expanded access. At the conclusion of this project, we will produce an immersive VR intervention that has the potential to increase access to mental health services, leading to better mental health outcomes for all adolescents. This transformative experience will provide a toolkit for students to imagine and create a digital world where they are able to thrive in the face of traumatic online experiences.