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

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY Race-related traumatic online experiences have become daily stressors in the lives of adolescents of color. Black adolescents for example, have an average of 5.2 incidents of racial discrimination per day, with those occurring online as most frequent. Examples include witnessing calls for genocide of people of color, mock lynchings, and having your intelligence questioned because of your race. 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 race 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 race-related messages in a safe, and engaging environment, free of stigma. We propose an 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 culturally-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 Black and Latinx communities since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. 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 of color. 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 reduce disparities in access to mental health services in underserved communities, leading to better mental health equity and outcomes among Black and Latinx adolescents. This transformative experience will help Black and Latinx young people become more efficacious with respect to racial coping. It will also 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.