Virtual Reality Aimed at the Elderly Finds New Fans | Hacker News Reader

Virtual Reality Aimed at the Elderly Finds New Fans

npr.org

78 pointsvwcx41 comments

A few weeks ago I went to a family gathering and brought along my Gear VR to demonstrate to my family. My mother, who is in her late 60's loved it immensely. I set her up with a street view app and dropped her in the little village she grew up in as a child. Someplace she hasn't been in years but talks about every day.

Watching her swirl around and comment on her surroundings was really amusing. She overheated the Galaxy phone several times and couldn't get enough of it.

My father is 84 years old and now living in a nursing home, where mom sits with him every day. He suffers from advanced Parkinson's, with increasingly bad dementia - lots of trouble parsing reality from fantasy, often mixing up TV shows with events in the real world. His life consists of nurses, wheelchairs, broadcast TV and a lot of sleep. He's miserable.

Mom pleaded with me to let him use the VR headset. Even though I wanted to, I just couldn't take the risk of it having some negative effect. He barely understood digital technology when he was still sharp, so the jarring effects of seeing an error message, getting a broken visual or something would be highly alarming in his current frame of mind. Plus I couldn't guarantee he wouldn't get some sort of psychosis or motion sickness from using it with his illness.

I really hope more research comes out about how VR affects the elderly, and people with dementia or other neurological disorders. Being bedridden in a hospital is the worst possible scenario for anyone and VR could be a godsend to people in this situation.

What is the risk you're envisioning? It can't be worse than being trapped in a hospital.

Yeah - being scared and trapped in a world that consists of a big error message filling your vision is worse.

I've spent my entire life around nursing homes, and I'd definitely be willing to experiment with VR (in small doses at first) with an ailing, elderly relative. There isn't much worse than being sick, old, and mostly without the people you love most.

However, if you're not willing to go that route, there are some things you can do to help. My dad has been a nursing home administrator, my mom was an activity director, and I worked and volunteered in homes as a kid (and later worked for a company that sold media aimed at nursing home residents) - so I've seen what a great effect small things can have. A few things I would recommend:

-Old radio shows, especially the ones that still have the ads inserted between the shows. Spotify has some, and there are a lot of sites where old radio fans have gathered episodes or links to places to buy them.

-Music from your father's youth. Check out this non-profit for more information on the benefits of music for those with dementia. https://www.facebook.com/MusicAndMemory/

-Calm travel shows, old westerns if that's his thing, stuff like Lawrence Welk or I Love Lucy - a lot of older shows can wake up old memories, or just calm people down a little. We like the familiar things from better days. One of those kid-proof Kindles can be great for someone with shaky hands or the tendency to get upset and disoriented, but definitely do whatever you can to safeguard against theft. Many homes have trouble with that, sadly. It's really unfortunate that people who do such important work for our elderly after barely paid enough to get by, but that's another issue entirely.

-Screensaver-type DVDs (virtual fireplaces, gardens, snow scenes, waterfalls, etc.) - they can be very relaxing, especially the ones with decent sound effects.

Having the same problems with overheating on street view and youtube app.

I have a mother who is bed-bound in a nursing home right now (cancer.. bleh). One problem i'm having is that she isn't able to navigate the app very easily (fingers are numb from various medicines). Trying to find a good way to "mirror" and navigate for her from my phone is a pain. Nothing quite works the way I think it should. I think if we're going to give the elderly a chance to view VR, there needs to be some kind of remote assistance built in. I think this would go a long way

This. Remote assistance would be huge

Most of us reading this thread will die in VR. If I'm laying there in a hospital bed 50 years from now, I'm certainly going to be reliving memories/visiting with friends/experiencing therapy in VR, rather than taking in the bleak room around me...

Or at least, AR, or maybe VR rooms to visit your friends and family in.

I wish to die in VR. But not in the landing.

Makes sense, we've been escaping through books for centuries.

You could also go the Huxley route and get injected with LSD on your deathbed.

I listened to a podcast yesterday where a psychologist specializing in intervening with people who have been victimized by coercive negative cults was talking about how we all thought the increased information available on the internet would make cults less of a problem, but savvy recruiters have actually used better communication tools to make dangerous cults more of a problem than they ever have been.

He was very concerned about just how much power VR environments have over those inside them, and how destructive that power will be when controlled by bad actors.

So it's the standard tool argument of course, it's not good or bad, just a power multiplier for influencing people. But we do tend to ignore the inevitable abuses of this new power in favour of talking about the positive uses like this. Although addictive VR environments for lonely elderly people will be a great way to stop them from getting any physical activity whatsoever and speeding up the aging process.

For those who can't walk, VR would certainly get them sitting up and moving their head a lot more than a TV does.

> And for those unhappy in the present day, virtual reality might provide an escape into an immersive other world that "allows them to forget their chronic pain, anxiety, the fact that they are alone," Kim says.

Maybe I should get a Vive after all!

When I was 12, my dad asked what I wanted for Christmas. I told him I really wanted a pet dog. I had no friends and was lonely all the time, so I thought a dog might make me feel less lonely. So he got me Dogz for Windows 95 on CD-ROM. It had the opposite effect.

There is serious academic research that disagrees with your anecdote.

On the other hand, there's serious life experience that disagrees with your argumentum ad verecundiam.

(that's not how that one works)

With no cites, it absolutely is.

I guess you're right, maybe he didn't feel what he thought he felt. :-P

He edited his post. He originally made the statement that his experience proved VR therapy was a stupid idea.

I did edit it a little, but only to make it (slightly) more tactful.

In VR you could meet real people, though - I don't think it's quite the same.

Right. I only meant regarding an "escape into an immersive other world that allows them to forget [...] the fact that they are alone."

Should have read White Fang by Jack London instead.

Yes! That's exactly the kind of VR application I'm hoping folks would develop.

Tangent: "Elders React to Oculus Rift" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ8Xj_I3aNU

"And while prices for mobile VR equipment have come down, it still costs about $850 for each Samsung Gear VR headset plus the Galaxy smartphone that slides into it — costly enough that the firm doesn't have a rig for each client."

I thought Samsung Gear VR cost like $100 and the smartphones were like $400, tops?

I think you may be mixing up carrier subsidized smartphone costs with actual smartphone costs. Unsubsidized smartphones that are good enough to run VR applications smoothly are still $600-$700.

The cheapest phone that can be officially used in the GearVR (Galaxy s6, no curve) costs $579.99 unlocked from carrier (no contract). The gear VR is an extra $100, so the total cost is about $700. A bit shy of $850 but still a long ways away from cheap.

Its no news that older people form a large part of the userbase of Open Sim type virtual worlds such as Inworldz.

In virtual worlds, you can be whoever you want to be. Who wouldn't want to be young again? Forever young, forever beautiful, have the home of your dreams (and more land than you could ever own in RL) for a relatively small price... go out dancing (or roleplaying or riding motorcycles or whatever) every night without leaving your RL home... create art and other real people give you real money for it (small amounts, but still..)

There is way too much acceptance and compensation in the way people approach problems relating to old age. It just doesn't exist in other fields in the same way. So much is done atop the axiom that whatever is wrong with the old - in a biological, physical sense - is set in stone and cannot be changed, and thus, collectively, vast resources are addressed to coping or compensating rather than addressing. Problems should be solved, not papered over.

On the one hand, I agree that aging and the problems associated with it are often treated as unavoidable to the future detriment of us all, but on the other hand, it's also definitely investing our time and effort where we get the most return (given that we're pretty sure we'll get a return, which isn't necessarily true of trying to eliminate the ills of old age).

My grandparents watch people 15 years younger than them get fat on the cafeteria food served in their retirement community, and move down the hall to more and more involved nursing care until they die of heart failure.

Most diseases of old age are diseases of lifestyle, we know how to cure them, we just don't know how to get people to take the medicine.

Most of the time we also know how to get people to take the medicine, but an outdated code of ethics prevents us from doing it.

What do you mean? Could you please elaborate?

He means forcing them. It's for your own good. It's taking the decision out of their hands.

Their hands are not the problem, it's the brain driving those hands that shouldn't be trusted.

I mean that we expect patients to provide "informed consent" to medical treatment, something which is impossible because the vast majority of patients are not physicians, and even those who are will usually not be experts in the relevant specialty. Most of the time, patients have the sense to trust and listen to their doctors. However, sometimes they do not, and the fact that the option exists means that a vital skill for physicians has become the ability to persuade patients into accepting the right treatment, a skill which is largely orthogonal to the one of deciding what the right treatment is.

For a concrete example, all you have to do is look at the recent outbreaks of measles due to parents choosing not to vaccinate their children.

I think this podcast may give you a different perspective: [1]. It's not particularly about old age, but about how trying to just solve someone's condition can sometimes lead to unsatisfying results (especially when the condition is chronic and people trying to solve it haven't admitted yet that we just don't have any good solutions).

[1] http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/483855073/the-proble...

Reminds me of this movie:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Cut_(2004_film)

There are medical risks. I assume, like with anything clinical, you'll need a doctor's prescription for VR.

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