Future of Childhood Salon: Immersive Media and Child Development

On November 7 and 8, 2018, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University, and Dubit will host the inaugural Future of Childhood Salon on Immersive Media and Child Development. At this day-and-a-half workshop, we will proactively plan for the future of immersive media—i.e., virtual, augmented, and mixed realities—in the lives of preadolescents before these technologies become ubiquitous among children this age. A cross-sectoral group of approximately 65 child development and media researchers, learning scientists, child health experts, hardware and content developers, educators, journalists, and funders will look at these emerging media via a cascading series of considerations. These will be organized around necessary choices in order for VR, AR, and MR—from such time they are approved for use by pre-teens—to be unique, essential, safe, engaging, and beneficial to children’s socio-emotional, cognitive, and physical development. The goal is to emerge with an agenda for needed research, a framework for responsible development of immersive experiences for children, and industry-wide best practices that can evolve over time via cross-sectoral partnerships.