Is Social VR Addictive?

I myself am nearing 2,000 hours logged in VRChat and I have multiple friends surpassing 5,000 hours. I find it is common for long-term VRChat users to end up spending 20-40 hours in VRChat a week.

Periodically the question arises in discussion, "Are we addicted?"

The surface level answer would appear to be obviously "Yes", but I believe there is a nuance to this that really has to do with the definition of the word "addiction" and many outdated understandings of it.

In the anti-drug propaganda heydays of the 70's a conception of addiction became common sense. That being, repeated triggering of reward centers of the brain would create a habituation that is very hard to undo, perhaps even physically hardwired in the brain. Drugs were seen as substances that would trigger these reward centers in the brain and if given access to a drug, one would just keep consuming it, continually triggering the reward center. This perspective had actual empirical studies backing it at the time. The studies involved locking rats in cages that had one water bottle laced with heroin, then another without heroin, and they observed rats inevitably got addicted to heroin until overdose. It was a very mechanistic view of addiction based entirely upon physiological mechanics. This perspective still underlays much of our conception of the word "addiction".

In recent times a new conception of addiction has been proliferating to common sense perspective. I find this new perspective and its research to be best summarized by this article, The Opposite of Addiction is Connection | Psychology Today.

To paraphrase the article, modern studies on rats and addiction introduced a new variable to the experiment. Instead of locking rats in isolated cages with a choice between heroin water and plain water, they instead placed the rats in larger enclosures with access to social spaces. What they found was when rats had a healthier environment to live in and access to social activities with other rats, they tended to not get addicted to heroin. The desire for social activity, the desire for social connection, overrode any physiologically addictive mechanic of heroin. This came to develop the new perspective on addiction, which is the title of that article, "The Opposite of Addiction is Connection". That addiction is a coping mechanism for lack of social connection, and ultimately what we seek, what we are ultimately always and inevitably addicted to is social connection and other people. But that is not really addiction, that is just being a healthy sociable person.

You can apply this to modern social media like Twitter or Facebook, which often gets blamed for being addictive, for tuning their algorithms to optimize for triggering reward centers in the brain and habit formation. But I think an obvious thing people miss about social media is, if other people weren't on such platforms, no one would be addicted to them. That the real fundamental addiction of social media is nothing technological, rather it is other people. Social media exploits our addiction to other people, it mediates it through a bunch of user interfaces and schemes that exist to basically extract profit from the fact that we uncontrollably and instinctually seek social interaction, social connection, with each other. But ultimately, it is still other people we are addicted to, which is not really addiction, that is just being a healthy sociable person. Perhaps the great malevolence of social media is not that we are hooked to it, but rather that its capacity for true social connection is so lackluster that our need for social connection can never be truly fulfilled by social media. It's basically scamming our instinctual need for social connection to generate profit.

But what if a technology could enable a fulfilling social connection? Wouldn't that just be people experiencing a healthy sociable life?

This presents a rather intriguing nuance to the subject of addiction in something like the Metaverse, or specifically Social VR. In that, really no one is addicted to the VR part of it, they are ultimately addicted to other people. It is the incredible ease of access to social connection which turns it into a regular, and central, part of their life. Unlike the constraints of a smartphone screen and Twitter feed, a full-body-tracked high-end VR setup does actually capture enough of another's presence to enable rich interactions with other people that effectively recreate similar experience and emotion comparable to social interaction in real life. In the context of addiction Social VR is more akin to the social space introduced into the rat enclosures that proved to be the antidote to addiction.

Social VR being addictive is a rather odd notion when you understand it in the context of the most recent research about addiction. As to say someone is addicted to Social VR is saying someone is addicted to the antidote to addiction. It is saying they are addicted to human connection, but connection is the opposite of addiction. It doesn't quite make sense.

As virtual reality and self-virtualization technology progresses, I think a question we will all have to contend with is what really constitutes "Reality"? Is it the fact the photons hitting your eyeballs are reflected off of physical matter? Or is it the resultant emotion and experience you went through, and how it affected you, how it developed you?

My experience so far has been that your brain, your instinct, your 'self', does not care how the photons are generated. There is no real ultimate difference in photons reflecting off physical matter versus photons being synthetically generated from an optic. Your brain doesn't care. What sticks with you is the experience, is the emotion, is what you felt. Feeling something from social interaction through a synthetic technology is not invalidated because it wasn't formed off photons reflecting off physical matter. The source of emotion is irrelevant, it affects you just the same.

This presents a rather interesting prospect in that, if virtual reality and self-virtualization technology can truly capture the presence of a person and make it available instantly anywhere in the world for a sense of truly fulfilling social interaction and social connection. Well, we have actually just invented the single most addictive technology to ever exist that will be more addictive than even the most addictive drugs like heroin. But it's not because the technology is addictive, it's because other people are our ultimate addiction.

Personally, I expect Social VR to absorb the entire population over the next decade or two, I expect it to become the primary social space of society, simply for what I just described. It exploits what is our ultimate addiction, but is not really an addiction, it's a component of healthy sociable life. Social VR makes readily available social connection to anyone in the world, to anyone else anywhere else in the world. It is physically impossible to get access to more people, to more social interaction, than you could through virtual reality. It essentially lets everyone teleport themselves anywhere in the world. If other people truly are what we ultimately seek and what we inevitably always tend towards, even over the most addictive of psychotropic substances. Well then, there is nothing that will provide easier access to more people than Social VR and it is what we are all currently orbiting and will inevitably get pulled into.

As I see it, the reason we place so much value on local meatspace based social interaction is because that is currently where we find the most empowerment. Thus far it has been your connections in real life that introduce you to new people who can really change your life and open doors. We view meatspace as more relevant not because of its physicality, but because the greater value it provides to us for survival. But what then happens when we have a virtual construct which is just as capable of creating human connection and opening doors to what we need? What then happens when this virtual construct essentially enables you to teleport instantly anywhere in the globe, enabling you to create a far larger and expansive social network to open even more doors than you ever could in your local meatspace? Then all of a sudden, the virtualspace becomes more central to our survival and meatspace becomes secondary.

I can easily see a complete inverse in the predominance of virtualspace versus meatspace over the next few decades. Where in the Metaverse you will have hundreds, thousands, of meaningful social connections and relationships all over the world which will afford you the social connection into far more things than you could manage in the reach of your local meatspace. If you start to spend too much time in meatspace, it will be your larger, more expansive, more connected virtualspace social circulation that will find you weird for exerting so much time and energy in meatspace, rather than further developing yourself in virtualspace. Developing oneself in virtualspace will be seen as the more obvious necessity in developing yourself in the global society, the more relevant society, and improving your life. Having meaningful deep connection with only a handful of immediate family members and friends in meatspace will be seen as weird and anti-social in comparison to having comparably meaningful deep connection with dozens, hundreds, of people globally in virtualspace.