Ways to eliminate Cyber sickness: Increasing ailment of virtual exposure

Cyber sickness is an emerging mental syndrome occurs due to scrolling through a mobile phone and show symptoms of a headache and nausea. It assaults majority of populace using mobile gadgets.  People face this syndrome when they watch fast motion on a screen and cover anything in a film and spend hours scrolling through web pages on phone or computer. Simple stated, Cyber sickness is the incongruity of responses between the eyes and the rest of the senses. It is experienced by users when they watch 3D or virtual reality pictures, play mobile games, and excessively use smartphone.

Burgeoning research studies have found that the most troublesome effect of virtual reality on the user is onset of cyber sickness. Basically, cyber sickness is a form of motion sickness that results from interaction with or immersion in virtual environment. Statistics have shown that 78% of users experience some form of oculomotor problems, 70% users feel nausea, and 67% users are disoriented exposed to virtual interaction. These staggering data clearly indicate clinicians and experts to explore the grounds of cyber sickness and provide its remedy.

Visual feedback characteristics are important and potentially aggravating factors of cyber sickness. The response to sensorial conflict differ from individual to individual. Some users embraces symptoms of cyber sickness after very little time on a simulator while other users of same system are more resistant and exhibit fewer or no symptoms. It can be widely recognized that susceptibility of cyber sickness is age reliant. It is higher between the age of 2-12 years and decline after 25 years of age. Age induced resistance is associated with the level of neurohormonal substances in body, since some hormones improve the user’s ability to adapt visuovestibular sensorial conflict.

Persons who are gripped under cyber sickness show array of symptoms like:

Ø Eye strain

Ø Headache

Ø Pallor

Ø Sweating

Ø Dryness of mouth

Ø Fullness of stomach

Ø Disorientation

Ø Vertigo2

Ø Ataxia3

Ø Nausea

Ø Vomiting.

Striking factor in cyber sickness is that female users are more vulnerable to cyber sickness as compared to male users. Their susceptibility is affected by numerous factors such as pregnancy, menstrual cycle that impact on the level of hormone. 

Besides, age and gender, users are more prone to cyber sickness when they regularly consume medication which affect sensorial and neuro processing centres. Drugs and alcohol also fuel the cyber sickness as they affect the neural mechanism of users and weakens the resistance.

Ways to manage cyber sickness:

Probably the simple way to get rid of cyber sickness is to institute usage protocol. Both exposure duration and number of repeat exposures have been shown to affect the level of motion sickness experienced by users, sickness increases with the duration.

There is a grave concern of psychologists, researchers and intellectuals that continued progression of virtual reality technology may result in cyber sickness to majority of users. It is well comprehended that cyber sickness related with virtual reality is a discomfort for users as it is a kind of motion sickness which involves moving digital content.