VR school story idea

I make this to air out some ideas for a VR centric tale that explores life where the "third places" are extinct and where people's only interaction are through VR, and are carefully controlled by parents and the AI teachers. The goal is try to bring these students together as a group of close knit friends, to varying degrees of success.

The main cast will be a class of students, they will consist of teenagers and their younger siblings as they navigate the VR school. They all belong to the same homeroom and have only each other for company. The curricula and schedule would be tailored around these students, with the younger ones temporarily going "offline" for specific periods so that the older students can focus on more complex subjects.

The program woukd be created as a response to issues involving the mental health of the youth and the death of places where children could develop naturally, with even traditional schools being in decline due to economic and political factors. It is the brainchild if a tech company and is therefore subject to their oversight, preventing it from being an effective remedy to the problem it purports to solve.

The concept is inspired by recent conversations I've had and the claims of smartphones and social media being mental health hazard and decline of third places. As such the themes would include the constraints of children, control, isolation and and how to use tech responsibly. I make this thread for the following reasons.

• Refining the premise into something more focused
• Asking what could the world could've taken to reach this point (beyond the development of advanced VR and AI)
• Ask for the problems that would ensure by putting a bunch of kids together in a semi-closed circle
• How using advanced tech in this manner could backfire.
• And the mental health benefits and draw backs of such a method.

I apologize if this post is muddled. This is part of the reason I want to make this thread.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 12th 2024 at 8:20:07 AM

A few thoughts:

• VR being manipulated to alter what a given individual perceives.
  • Think of a bully gaining access to a victim's VR and altering their test questions, or changing what the teacher appears to say, or placing text, images, or objects in their view.
• The AI teaching the children inaccuracies due to "AI hallucinations"
• The AI teaching the children in accordance with the particular views of whoever runs the tech company
• Increased opportunities for data-mining and advertising to the children

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Apr 12th 2024 at 7:03:48 PM