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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Virtual Real.
Sec. Virtual Reality and Human Behaviour
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frvir.2025.1451273
This article is part of the Research Topic Ethics in the Metaverse View all 3 articles

Ethical concerns in contemporary virtual reality and three frameworks for pursuing responsible use

Provisionally accepted
Urooj S. Raja Urooj S. Raja 1*Reem Al-Baghli Reem Al-Baghli 2
  • 1 Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, United States
  • 2 Kuwait University, Kuwait City, Kuwait

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Researchers have identified various ethical issues related to the use of VR. For example, issues of consent, privacy and harm. It is important to address these issues as VR impacts various industries, including communications, education and entertainment. Existing ethical frameworks in particular may be the closest tool we have when it comes to understanding how to curb some of the ethical challenges that the technology presents. Recent work names ethical concerns related to VR, such as privacy and accessibility; however, we note that less discuss frameworks that can be used to guide responsible VR use. Such work also glosses over what various audiences think about ethical issues. This information in turn could be used to determine which existing frameworks can provide guidance for responsible use. To address this gap, we examine current literature, government documents, and conduct an analysis of 300 Amazon reviews of three top-rated VR products—to see whether and what ethical concerns various audiences identify. That is, we ask two questions: 1) Are three specific types of audiences naming ethical VR issues, and if so, what are the issues? 2) What frameworks could potentially guide users toward responsible use? We find that users are concerned about ethical issues and that three frameworks could guide us towards more responsible VR use: 1) Institutional Review Board (IRB) frameworks, 2) a care ethics framework, and 3) co-created, living ethical codes. We further pull from these three frameworks to offer a new ethical synthesis framework or ESF framework that could guide responsible use.

    Keywords: virtual reality, VR, Ethics, Responsible use, Care ethics

    Received: 18 Jun 2024; Accepted: 09 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Raja and Al-Baghli. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Urooj S. Raja, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.