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Impact of the recreational use of virtual reality on physical and mental wellbeing during the Covid-19 lockdown

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about significant changes to most aspects of our lives. As a result of the quarantine enforced by governments and authorities worldwide, people had to suddenly adapt their daily routines, including work, study, diet, leisure and fitness activities to the new circums...

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Autores principales: Siani, Alessandro, Marley, Sarah Anne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7882463/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33614391
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12553-021-00528-8
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author Siani, Alessandro
Marley, Sarah Anne
author_facet Siani, Alessandro
Marley, Sarah Anne
author_sort Siani, Alessandro
collection PubMed
description The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about significant changes to most aspects of our lives. As a result of the quarantine enforced by governments and authorities worldwide, people had to suddenly adapt their daily routines, including work, study, diet, leisure and fitness activities to the new circumstances. A growing body of research indicates that the engagement with virtual reality (VR) activities can have a positive impact on users’ mental and physical wellbeing. This study aims to evaluate the impact of VR activities on users under lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. An online survey was carried out to investigate the recreational use of VR during the lockdown period and to gather users’ opinions on its impact on their physical and mental health. Non-parametric tests were used to evaluate the statistical significance of the responses provided by the 646 participants. The results of the survey show that VR use has significantly increased during the lockdown period for most participants, who expressed overwhelmingly positive opinions on the impact of VR activities on their mental and physical wellbeing. Strikingly, self-reported intensity of physical activity was considerably more strenuous in VR users than in console users. Given the current uncertainty as to the duration and course of the pandemic, as well as the possibility of intermittent lockdown in the upcoming years, the outcomes of this study could have a significant impact towards the development and deployment of VR-based strategies aimed at helping the population cope with prolonged social distancing, with particular regards to vulnerable individuals.
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spelling pubmed-78824632021-02-16 Impact of the recreational use of virtual reality on physical and mental wellbeing during the Covid-19 lockdown Siani, Alessandro Marley, Sarah Anne Health Technol (Berl) Original Paper The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about significant changes to most aspects of our lives. As a result of the quarantine enforced by governments and authorities worldwide, people had to suddenly adapt their daily routines, including work, study, diet, leisure and fitness activities to the new circumstances. A growing body of research indicates that the engagement with virtual reality (VR) activities can have a positive impact on users’ mental and physical wellbeing. This study aims to evaluate the impact of VR activities on users under lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. An online survey was carried out to investigate the recreational use of VR during the lockdown period and to gather users’ opinions on its impact on their physical and mental health. Non-parametric tests were used to evaluate the statistical significance of the responses provided by the 646 participants. The results of the survey show that VR use has significantly increased during the lockdown period for most participants, who expressed overwhelmingly positive opinions on the impact of VR activities on their mental and physical wellbeing. Strikingly, self-reported intensity of physical activity was considerably more strenuous in VR users than in console users. Given the current uncertainty as to the duration and course of the pandemic, as well as the possibility of intermittent lockdown in the upcoming years, the outcomes of this study could have a significant impact towards the development and deployment of VR-based strategies aimed at helping the population cope with prolonged social distancing, with particular regards to vulnerable individuals. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2021-02-14 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC7882463/ /pubmed/33614391 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12553-021-00528-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Paper
Siani, Alessandro
Marley, Sarah Anne
Impact of the recreational use of virtual reality on physical and mental wellbeing during the Covid-19 lockdown
title Impact of the recreational use of virtual reality on physical and mental wellbeing during the Covid-19 lockdown
title_full Impact of the recreational use of virtual reality on physical and mental wellbeing during the Covid-19 lockdown
title_fullStr Impact of the recreational use of virtual reality on physical and mental wellbeing during the Covid-19 lockdown
title_full_unstemmed Impact of the recreational use of virtual reality on physical and mental wellbeing during the Covid-19 lockdown
title_short Impact of the recreational use of virtual reality on physical and mental wellbeing during the Covid-19 lockdown
title_sort impact of the recreational use of virtual reality on physical and mental wellbeing during the covid-19 lockdown
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7882463/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33614391
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12553-021-00528-8
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