{"id":351460,"date":"2025-12-16T10:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T10:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/351460\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T10:08:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T10:08:09","slug":"for-some-young-people-its-the-social-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/351460\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018For some young people it\u2019s the social\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Screens get the blame for many things \u2013 from problematic content, to depriving teenagers of \u201creal-life\u201d experiences, to curtailing social development. Ask most adults and parents what they think about young people and their screen use, and the reply will probably be negative.<\/p>\n

A new project is looking to change that. Rather than distancing young people from their peers, For\u00f3ige GoVirtual seeks to connect vulnerable and isolated young people through virtual reality.<\/p>\n

The project has received support under the Scaling Education Fund from ReThink Ireland. Alternate Spacers groups meet every Thursday evening and are, in essence, virtual youth clubs.<\/p>\n

Noreen O\u2019Donnell\u2019s three children used the GoVirtual services over the past number of years, when they were between the ages of 13 and 16. The family live on Arranmore Island in Donegal, which has relatively few young people, she says. Her daughter Fiona has only very recently finished up with the service.<\/p>\n

\"ArranmoreArranmore Island, Co Donegal <\/p>\n

O\u2019Donnell\u2019s children \u201cabsolutely loved it\u201d, she says. \u201cIt\u2019s like youth club from a virtual perspective and you make your little avatar and you play games with people from all around. It started off with meeting [people on] different islands, from Scotland and around Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a safe environment … You\u2019re not chatting to the public. There\u2019s no outside interference. Nobody else is coming in. You have to be approved to join it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within the sessions, \u201cthey were doing paintballing. They were doing hide-and-go seek, basketball. And it was great fun. They played cards. And mindfulness and treasure hunts and different things like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere wasn\u2019t a lot for the children to do\u201d on the island, O\u2019Donnell explains. \u201cAnything at all would be a help. Anything to broaden their mind. Anything to help them move forward, meet other people. From that perspective the VR was good. The opportunities they got with that, it was brilliant. They even got to meet Heather Humphreys<\/a> online.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe supervisors send me an email and they tell me exactly who\u2019s going to be on. They don\u2019t see each other at all. You create an avatar and that is you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fiona shares her mother\u2019s enthusiasm for the project. \u201cVR let me do things I can\u2019t do in real life, practise skills in a more engaging way.\u201d<\/p>\n

It helped her to make new friends too. \u201cBecause you naturally meet people who share the same interests while doing activities together. They\u2019re people I\u2019d never have met in real life.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Sparking innovation in healthcare: From virtual reality for pain to digital diagnostic systemsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Tania Potter\u2019s son Ryan Minagh has been involved with the VR Alternate Spacers group since the beginning. He now serves as a junior volunteer member. Ryan is a wheelchair user, and Potters says it has been incredibly important in allowing him to connect with other young people.<\/p>\n

He is 20 now and first became involved when he was about 15. \u201cHe\u2019s loving it the same as he did from the start. He\u2019s becoming a volunteer. He\u2019s training in or helping new people and showing them the ropes. And he enjoys that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Potter had been concerned about the risk of her son becoming isolated. \u201cAny youth clubs or stuff like that he\u2019d partake in, generally we have to make sure obviously it\u2019s wheelchair accessible, and that he can do the majority of what they\u2019re doing, which rules out some things for him, just by nature of his physical disability.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TaniaTania and Ryan Minagh. <\/p>\n

Joining GoVirtual was suggested to them by the Irish Wheelchair Association. \u201cIt was ideal for our situation. We also live out the country, so we would need to get transport to wherever he needs to go, and obviously because he\u2019s a wheelchair user, that\u2019s specialised too. So for all those reasons, and the fact that he loves VR, it was a great solution. I was really impressed that they thought of this as a way to include everyone who possibly might not get included for other reasons.\u201d <\/p>\n

Potter is \u201calways open to any idea. We tried the physical in person. And it worked too to a certain extent, but obviously if you have a physical disability … not every venue and not every activity and not everything is suitable. But when he goes on to that VR he\u2019s just the same as everyone else … It means he can partake the very same as everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Potter has seen her son\u2019s confidence grow. \u201cIt\u2019s brought him out of his shell a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan says every Thursday he enjoys joining the space for an hour. He spends that time \u201cplaying games, chatting\u201d and says he would \u201cdefinitely\u201d encourage other people to use it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnybody can use it,\u201d he says. His favourite game to play in the Alternate Spacers room is \u201csnipers versus runners\u201d. If there\u2019s one thing he feels could improve it\u2019s down to the equipment rather than the project itself. \u201cSome people with bad hands or poor circulation can\u2019t use the controllers,\u201d he says. Except for that, it\u2019s \u201cmostly amazing\u201d and he\u2019s planning to continue his involvement. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s engaging young people who can\u2019t access face-to-face youth services,\u201d says Tom Rickard, development officer with VR Development, For\u00f3ige. \u201cThat can be for a variety of reasons … We\u2019re looking at young people who are socially isolated. Maybe it\u2019s somebody from the LGBT community<\/a> where there might be challenges in accessing youth work services, or young people who are rurally isolated. You might have a young person whose disability actually means for them to attend a youth club might actually take two hours. It\u2019s giving that young person agency to be able to put on a headset and meet their youth worker\u201d.<\/p>\n

The young people connected through the service come with \u201cvarying degrees of vulnerability\u201d, Rickard says. \u201cWe might think a young person is isolated because they\u2019re living in a rural area, but actually there\u2019s a lot of peer-isolated young people in urban settings as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

It can be difficult to identify young people in need of access to the support, so the group have run a number of pilots. <\/p>\n

The virtual spaces used by the young people to meet, while on a public app, are completely private, Rickard says. No one can enter the space without approval. \u201cIt\u2019s a youth work facilitated space so all the adults in there are vetted … Even though we\u2019re working in that virtual environment, all the safeguarding procedures and policies apply.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rickard says, where appropriate, they try to provide opportunities for the young people who have engaged with the virtual service to meet in real life. He speaks of one group of autistic young people who came together to go bowling at the end of one pilot programme. \u201cThat particular pilot was about building those social skills parents particularly wanted the young people to practise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another pilot, Music-making in Virtual Worlds, involved young people identified by Tusla. \u201cYoung people took part in music making in VR, and out of that, one of those young people transitioned on to a face-to-face musical group in Galway. One young person transitioned on to another VR group that we have … because he needed that ongoing support. And another young person actually pathwayed on to an employment programme.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because young people can take their headset with them they\u2019re able to stay involved and connected when they\u2019re away, or even if they had a spell in hospital, Rickard says. \u201cThe more support we provide, the more that young person will want to engage in face-to-face services, if it\u2019s appropriate to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re taking VR and you\u2019re using it as a tool, but you\u2019re looking for that external support if it\u2019s needed,\u201d he says, explaining how one youth worker recognised a young person had dyslexia.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor some young people it\u2019s the social. It\u2019s just bopping in every week.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Screens get the blame for many things \u2013 from problematic content, to depriving teenagers of \u201creal-life\u201d experiences, to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[64,63,7110,22405,5327,105,193305,238,239,240],"class_list":{"0":"post-351460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-virtual-reality","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-disability","11":"tag-lgbtq","12":"tag-students","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-tusla","15":"tag-virtual-reality","16":"tag-virtualreality","17":"tag-vr"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}