Agreed. This whole phenomenon was reported on widely after "Avatar" came out. News anchors gleefully reporting that people left the theater feeling depressed their world wasn't as fantastic as Avatar. More of "the kids aren't alright!" reporting they love to do to scare parents and elderly folks.

My solution: Move out of the big cities. I live in a small town in the countryside and my world is that fantastic.

> More of "the kids aren't alright!" reporting they love to do to scare parents and elderly folks.

Sadly this is one of those topics, like violence in video games, where we don't get beyond this cycle of "accuse and deny". Which is a shame because IMO there are really important topics here we need to address collectively such as how this connects to addiction http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

The "data point" I've been able to confirm with other parents of small kids (under 10) is there is a connection between extended periods of computer-aided escapism and aggression.

The experiment you can try with most kids is give them a smartphone or iPad for 1-2 hours then take it away again with minimal warning but without using force. Once you've recovered the device, the next 15-30 minutes will typically involve aggressive behaviour; shouting, physical aggression towards siblings, demands to have the device back and something not unlike Gollum desiring his Precious.

Based on my own experiences, adults can exhibit similar behaviour but extremes are dampened by conditioning, so harder to detect e.g it manifests itself in different ways e.g. sadness or depression instead of aggression.

My hypothesis for this is something like 'For every 15 minutes given to a medium capable of 'fully absorbing' human attention (books, computer games VR), 5 minutes of "unconscious recovery time" will be required to re-align the attention to the current "real" reality, during which subjects may display behaviour such as aggression, sadness or general distractedness / fidgeting'

This ratio of 15 to 5 might be different depending on the medium e.g. VR might have a more accentuated ratio than reading a book.

Why this is so I can't say for sure, but it's something like a tax on time spent existing in a disconnected reality vs. the "real reality" our bodies live in.

> The experiment you can try with most kids is give them a smartphone or iPad for 1-2 hours then take it away again with minimal warning but without using force. Once you've recovered the device, the next 15-30 minutes will typically involve aggressive behaviour; shouting, physical aggression towards siblings, demands to have the device back and something not unlike Gollum desiring his Precious.

Try the same with a book they show interest in, and you'll get the same behaviour. But nobody does that with a book because it's ridiculous, right? But so it is ridiculous to do that with an iPad or a personal computer! I'd say it's a pretty normal reaction of someone who was concentrated and fully engaged in an action, only to be unexpectedly and forcibly interrupred.

A simpler explanation to your experiences may simply be disappointment from having expectations unmet. If you were looking forward to a quiet date night without kids, only for them to suddenly come back home after being gone for just an hour, wouldn't you similarly feel such negative emotions as you adjusted to the reality of the situation?

Using a smartphone or a tablet computer for 2 hours straight will result in a negative physical condition so it is no wonder if the kids are cranky after that.

Also disrupting "flow" can make people cranky since its hard to attain that kind of a mindstate (a lot of work can go to waste if somebody interrupts you).

Anyway... I've seen kids playing Pokemon Go running around the neighborhood and the forests near by, and they seem like happy campers. It's good that there is at least something that makes kids play outside these days.

Moving to the country is as difficult as moving to the city.

Seriously. Get me some fiber and a trainline into the city and it becomes feasible. Alternatively, hopefully I can live to become either rich, or retire comfortably to that countryside home.

Must be a different countryside than the one I grew up in.

Exactly. These are the symptoms of a withdrawal from escapism. You could replace "VR" in the article by many other kinds of absorbing experiences. Not to discredit the author's own personal findings, it's probably a healthy thing to be self-aware of these feelings. And there might be something to VR that makes the contrast of detachment more intense.

Well in the author's opinion it's actually not the same. That's why he specifically points out counter examples of non-VR experiences which have similar but notably less intense effects.

It's still an opinion, sure, but the author did address this comparison.

Reading this I felt reminded of my experiences playing for Liverpool Action Role Playing. Being in character for several days and totally escaping get the outside world - then shedding the costume and sitting in a car on the motorway back home.

Well talk about post adventure depression.

Then walking up to the door of your longtime girlfriend and knowing get what was awaiting me - talk about remedy.

Escapism in the former of a holiday from reality might be great - but reality has it's own perks.

It's the intensity of the experience that will make VR the new hyper-addictive drug of choice for escaping reality in the near future.

I fully expect my children to be lamenting how their children won't want to come back to the physical (real) world - much like how we wanted our kids to get off the computer, and our parents didn't like us being on the telephone and watching TV.

Sword Art Online is a great exploration of this if you like anime.

I used to get that feeling to an extreme when exiting a movie theater. It had much more to do with being deeply unhappy than it had to do with movie theaters.