Aging in the Digital Age: Public Beliefs About the Potential of Virtual Reality (VR) for the Aging Population

Abstract

This paper responds to the scholarly call for investigating the role of technology consumption in promoting healthy aging—it aims to identify the public's beliefs about the potential of virtual reality technology (VR) for the well-being of older adults. The study utilized a big-data methodology and employed machine learning to scrape comments made by social media users on the most popular YouTube videos that discuss older people's use of VR technology. After the data cleaning process, the study was left with 1,917 comments out of 3,952 that were then subject to analysis through thematic, emotion, and sentiment analyses. The findings revealed three themes of the public beliefs: 1) empowerment through technology, generational adaptability, and learning; 2) social and ethical implications of VR for healthy aging; and 3) cognitive and physical engagement. The emotion and sentiment analyses indicated that the general public has a predominantly positive perception of the application of virtual reality technology for older people. In summary, the synthesis of the results from the three analyses suggested that VR has the potential to empower seniors and promote mental and physical activity while also highlighting the importance of maintaining genuine connections and ethical standards.