Walmart and Others Train Employees with Virtual Reality Despite Research Proving Harm Caused by It

By B.N. Frank

Research has already proven that Virtual Reality (VR) is not safe. The goggles expose users to harmful (and sometimes blinding) Blue Light and harmful (and sometimes cancerous) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) at close-range.

Side effects from VR use include:

From the Association for Psychological Science (February 2014), “Virtual avatars may impact real-world behavior”:

“Our results indicate that just five minutes of role-play in virtual environments as either a hero or villain can easily cause people to reward or punish anonymous strangers,” says lead researcher Gunwoo Yoon of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Yikes!

So companies who force employees to use VR as part of their job training seem to be just begging for lawsuits. Coincidentally, for many years now, telecom companies have been warning investors that they may eventually be held liable caused by harm from their products (and infrastructure). In the meantime, though, employers will likely be held liable to employees who become temporarily or permanently disabled from using VR as part of their training.

Obviously, schools who force students to use VR as part of their curriculum have put themselves in the same dumb position.