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In 2007, Brad Shreve was a stripper, and an excellent one too.
With his Adonis-like appears and party-boy attraction he rapidly earned sufficient to purchase his dream home on the seashore.
He spent his days constructing stunning bamboo furnishings out on the veranda, then nights dancing in golf equipment till daybreak. ‘I used to be utterly outgoing, a complete extrovert,’ he tells Metro.co.uk, laughing. ‘I used to be scorching and cocky.’
In truth, he was so assured that he even purchased a blimp to fly about in, emblazoned together with his personal face.
If Brad’s extravagant life appears too good to be actual, that’s as a result of it wasn’t.
This was the existence he had crafted for himself whereas he sat in entrance of a pc for greater than 12 hours a day, daily, for 4 years.
Brad was hooked on the massively multiplayer on-line role-playing recreation Second Life, an early incarnation of the numerous rising digital lands that at the moment are collectively often called the metaverse. Within the expertise individuals create an avatar to work together with a computer-generated surroundings and different customers.
They can socialise, social gathering, earn a living, kind relationships and even have intercourse — identical to actuality. Second Life, which was created by Linden Labs in 2003 and had greater than 1,000,000 customers at its peak, is now in Brad’s previous.
However, for a lot of, interacting through avatars on-line is about to be the longer term. Why? Because the metaverse now has massive tech’s backing. In October 2021, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his imaginative and prescient; a digital land named Horizon Worlds the place individuals talk through digital actuality headsets.
Microsoft can be investing within the idea, following its acquisition of gaming firm, Activision, earlier this 12 months. But how will the inevitable mass adoption of the metaverse have an effect on customers’ psychological well being, and can many discover the idea so fascinating it begins to eat away at actuality?
Brad explains that the enchantment of the metaverse is ‘you possibly can have a life you would by no means have in the actual world.’
Brad and his Second Life avatar, who he crafted for himself whereas he sat in entrance of a pc for greater than 12 hours a day, daily, for 4 years (Picture: Supplied)
He joined Second Life when he had been newly recognized with bipolar disorder. He was trialling medication and nothing seemed to be working.
‘First of all, with my anxiety level and the meds, I couldn’t leave the house. I became completely agoraphobic. I could hardly speak and I was comfortable there,’ he says. ‘I could have bought a yacht. At that time I was really overweight [but in the game] I was able to buy top-of-the-line clothing. I looked great and could go to places I never dreamed possible.’
Brad credits the virtual world with saving his life, but also believes he would have got better from his mental health struggles much sooner if he hadn’t been so hooked.
The word metaverse was first coined in 1992 by writer Neal Stephenson in his dystopian sci-fi novel ‘Snow Crash’. But, as Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, pointed out in an interview with AP News, in Stephenson’s book it was ‘a thing that people used to numb themselves when their lives were horrible.’
She also explained these immersive environments are designed to be ‘extremely addictive and they encourage people to unplug from the reality we actually live.’
This was true for a South Korean couple, back in 2010, who tragically let their three month-old baby starve as they spent 12 hours a day raising a virtual daughter in the Second Life-style game Prius Online.
Having both lost their jobs, police reported that the couple ‘indulged themselves’ in the game ‘so as to escape from reality.’
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen said that immersive environments are designed to be ‘extremely addictive’ (Picture: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
While the metaverse is in its infancy, we do know that excessive social media use is linked to mental health problems including depression, paranoid ideation, somatic symptoms, and psychoses.
15% of people aged 23-38 admit to being addicted to social media, Statista reports, with this number rising to 40% between the ages of 18 to 22.
However, Phil Reed, a professor of psychology at Swansea University, predicts that use of the metaverse will be just as compulsive. He is also sure this new frontier of the internet will ‘stop people facing the problems that they really need to face,’ but the true dangers lie in the fact it is further removed from ‘real communication.’
Reed explains to Metro.co.uk that the schizophrenic-like varieties of psychoses ‘involve a disconnection from reality and anything that enhances that disconnect or reinforces it can potentially be quite damaging.’
Professor Phil Reed fears that the metaverse will stop people facing the problems that they really need to face (Picture: Supplied)
His other concern is that because derealisation is a symptom of extreme anxiety and PTSD the distance from real life the metaverse provides ‘could feed into these anxiety related symptoms.’
Another former Second Life addict, identified only as Miles, tells Metro.co.uk he’s suffered from social anxiety his whole life. A self-professed ‘total nerd’, he first heard of the game via Popular Science magazine in the mid-noughties, when he was 14. ‘I was kind of blown away,’ he reveals.
‘Second Life has already been around for a little while at this point. So people had already built lots of stuff.
‘There was lots to explore and lots of people around. It seemed totally harmless at first, but I started spending more and more time on the game.’
By the time he was 15, Miles’ addiction to Second Life was so bad that he says it was ‘really all I wanted to do.’
Miles admits that Second Life seemed totally harmless at first (Picture: Getty Images)
His schoolwork began to suffer as he thought about the game all through class then neglected his homework. However, Miles wasn’t using his virtual life to have fun or attend parties as Brad did.
Instead, he spent his days engaging in military role-play. The teenager was the leader of a battalion, fighting against armies of avatars for hours every evening and all weekend.
‘It was still just a game, but people took it pretty seriously,’ he says. His double life as both schoolboy and soldier came to an abrupt end for reasons outside of his control: ‘My computer broke and the cheap new one I got as a replacement couldn’t run the game.’
Miles has mixed feelings about his time spent on Second Life. ‘There’s a point where it can go a little bit too far and you can find that you’re spending so much time in there that you’re neglecting your real life,’ he explains.
However, on the other hand, as a nervous teen, he ‘got a lot out of it socially.’ As a figure of authority he commanded respect. Plus, he had ‘a lot more friends in the game’ than he did at school.
This is one of the reasons that Peter Klein, a cognitive behavioural psychotherapist, thinks that the metaverse could have a positive impact on those with mental health struggles.
Psychotherapist Peter Klein believes that the metaverse can help someone feel less threatened when confronting a mental health issue (Picture: Supplied)
If someone has social anxiety ‘it can help to talk to people virtually because that sense of threat that they feel about people in person might be somewhat absent,’ he tells Metro.co.uk.
He adds that people will be able to confront phobias ‘in a very safe and controlled manner and that can really preclude them going out and actually confronting what they feel in person.’
According to a meta-analysis undertaken by JMIR Mental Health of a large number of trials, virtual reality is shown to effectively supports cognitive behavioural therapy [CBT] in treating anxiety and depression.
That said, the findings of clinical studies are very different from the wild west of a digital world where people, emboldened by the anonymity of avatars, can do and say what they like without checks.
Mimi Butlin, a disability activist and artist, welcomes any platform that will make socialising easier. She hopes the metaverse might also allow for a more inclusive environment and level the playing field, which could be helpful in combating isolation and depression. ‘For those who are predominantly housebound the metaverse could be really beneficial,’ she tells Metro.co.uk.
Digital spaces offer better access than the real world, says Mimi (Picture: Supplied)
‘Social media has been such a vital tool for disabled and chronically ill beings to have a social life and this will be an extension of that. It will also be a chance for people to do things that are inaccessible to them in the real world.’
These digital spaces might also offer easier access to mental health resources and therapy.
When Brad first joined Second Life he was 10-years sober, and immediately started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in a virtual hut in the woods. Without leaving his home, he could get support.
More: Mental health
With companies such Microsoft and Meta driving the concept forward, the big questions is not if we will use it, but are we ready? Society hasn’t been given the space to properly consider the consequences of life online, both good and bad.
As Reed puts it, no ‘other thing that would impact this many people, a new drug, a new recreational activity, nothing, would be allowed to proliferate this quickly, without appropriate checks.’
‘But,’ he adds, ‘social media seems to do that and seems to be allowed to do that… and that is the concern.’
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Claie.Wilson@metro.co.uk
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