Tracking Mixed Reality Adoption and Attitudes
We examine how widely adopted mixed reality devices are, why people use them, and how the public feels about the future of mixed reality.
Mixed reality is a combination of real-world and computer-generated environments, and has long been featured in science fiction books and movies. Technological capabilities, though, lagged behind our creative imaginations and only offered limited immersion into this mixed reality world by way of surround sound, vibrating chairs, and sometimes scents. Yet, the past decade has been marked by many of the world’s largest technology companies investing tens of billions of dollars into mixed reality devices and applications.
This includes numerous technology companies developing their own consumer-oriented mixed reality devices like the Google Glass AR glasses and Microsoft’s HoloLens. Social media giant Facebook even rebranded its company as Meta, in reference to their term for mixed reality -- the metaverse -- and argued that the future of mixed reality will not be limited to entertainment, but also be central to many other parts of life, like work. The global pandemic that required social distancing brought into focus some of the far-reaching ways that mixed reality may increasingly become our everyday reality.
With all of the new mixed reality technologies being released and companies making massive financial investments into mixed reality, we examined adoption of these technologies, how people feel about the future of mixed reality, and summarized our findings in today’s post. This is the first of many longitudinal measures of user experiences with mixed reality that we plan to report. To achieve our mission of nurturing ethical leaders who promote human well-being, we believe it is essential to examine user experiences across technologies and companies to help current and future leaders understand and improve the impact of these technologies on society. By publicizing our findings over time, we also aim to provide a public incentive for current and future technology leaders to define and measure the explicit value they are providing to users, not just the usage of their products.
How popular are mixed reality devices?
Despite the growing investment in and corporate excitement around mixed reality devices, just 3.1% (+/- 3.3% margin of error) of US adults report using one of these devices in the past four weeks. Meta’s Chief Technology Officer, Andrew Bosworth, proclaimed that “tens of millions of people are in VR,” which may be true if including US children and people in other countries. Yet, it may also be that these tens of millions of people who, at some point in time, have used a mixed reality device, stopped using that device. Investigative journalists report that more than half of people who have used Meta’ mixed reality headset have stopped using it entirely within six months. Currently, adoption of mixed reality devices is quite low, but the longitudinal nature of the Neely Mixed Reality Index survey will allow us to track potential increases in adoption, as well as experiences that arise as adoption grows.
Why do people use mixed reality devices?
While mixed reality devices have historically primarily been used for entertainment, technologists recently have argued that these devices could allow people to learn, shop, and work better remotely. So, what do US adults who use mixed reality devices use them for? Before describing what our respondents told us, we want to remind our readers that these are based on a very small number of people (3.1% of the US adult population), which means that the margins of error are quite large and the specific rank-ordering of these may differ. The most popular activities are still entertainment-oriented. More than 80% of US adults who use a mixed reality device use it for gaming. The next two most popular activities were watching movies or television (26.6%) and social interactions / networking (22.2%). In future waves of the survey, we will report on whether people become more likely to use mixed reality devices for additional activities.
How did these users feel about their mixed reality experiences?
In addition to asking about what activities people partake in when using a mixed reality device, we also ask them about their experiences using the device. Given the low overall use of mixed reality devices, I am only reporting the data for the one activity with at least 20 respondents -- gaming. If adoption increases over time, we will examine experiences for those additional activities, too.
We asked mixed reality users who used the device for gaming (40 out of 49 people in our sample of 1,619 US adults) whether their use of the mixed reality headset was useful or not for gaming. A majority (55%) reported that the headset was indeed “very” or “extremely” useful, and just 8% reported that the headset was not useful.
We also asked mixed reality users who used the device for gaming (40 out of 49 people in our sample of 1,619 US adults) whether their use of the mixed reality headset was harmful or not for gaming. A majority (74%) reported that the headset was “not at all” or “not very” harmful, and just one respondent reported that the headset was “extremely harmful.” This is not necessarily surprising given the relatively simple use cases that people are using mixed reality for (playing games, sometimes with their friends). As people start to do more complex things in mixed reality, we hope to track whether people start reporting more harmful experiences over time, as is more common with social media.
Who uses mixed reality devices?
Early adopters of new technology tend to be younger and are slightly more likely to be men. In the table below, I show the number and percentages of people in each of the demographic categories in each row and compare the people who use mixed reality devices to those who do not in the two columns to the right. While the number of users is low, we can still examine them for patterns to compare with other data sources, and to establish a baseline for future waves of the Neely Mixed Reality Index survey. We see that mixed reality device users tend to be younger, more likely to be men, and more likely to be Asian and/or Hispanic.
How does the general public feel about the increased use of mixed reality devices in everyday life?
We also asked our full representative panel of US adults, regardless of whether they had actually used a mixed reality device in the past four weeks, two questions on how they felt about the increased use of these devices in daily life.
The first question asked how excited (or not) respondents are about the increased use of mixed reality experiences in daily life. 77% (+/- 3.3%) of respondents were “not at all excited” or “not very excited.” Just 1% (+/- 3.3%) of US adults were extremely excited, and 4% (+/- 3.3%) were very excited.
The other question asked how concerned (or not) respondents are about the increased use of mixed reality experiences in daily life. 47% (+/- 3.3%) of US adults were not at all or not very concerned, and a slight majority (53% [+/- 3.3%]) were at least somewhat concerned.
Since only a small number of users have direct experience with mixed reality, it will be interesting to see whether excitement and concern change over time, as users start to adopt these technologies and interact with them directly.
In Summary
The number of US adults currently using mixed reality devices within the previous 4 week period is quite small. Those who do use these devices overwhelmingly use them for entertainment purposes, despite marketing attempts to encourage workplace adoption. For the people choosing to use these devices for gaming, they report that the devices are useful for gaming and that they do not view these devices as harmful. The broader public, though, is not particularly excited about the increased use of mixed reality in their daily lives. That said, commonly it is small groups of early adopters using new technology for a niche purpose before the technology is adopted by a wider array of users. At a recent conference held by the Neely Center to envision the future of mixed reality, practitioners were using mixed reality to treat Parkinson's disease, improve access to mental healthcare, and bridge political divisions. Meta’s own marketing efforts often highlight such use cases. It is possible that the future of mixed reality could be smaller scale and more driven by specific important use cases.
The tepid public sentiment towards mixed reality may be an example of consumers not knowing what they want, as is implied by the quote often attributed to Henry Ford -- “If I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Perhaps we are prisoners of our current affordances and simply want what we know to perform better, and not something that breaks the mold. Alternately, we might just not want devices that are expensive, heavy, inaccessible for those with disabilities, exclusionary for black people with hair, and/or create new ways for people on the internet to bully and harass users. Yet, these current drawbacks or problems with mixed reality devices today are all addressable as technology advances. Computing hardware used to fill entire buildings; as technology has evolved, that same computing power can fit in a smartphone that fits even in the pocket of skinny jeans. And, as devices become more widely used, it seems highly likely that companies would build out different apparati, attachments, and software that would improve their accessibility for all.
Technology companies are continuing to invest heavily in building mixed reality devices and the software worlds that may unlock their potential. In fact, Meta has reported losing $46.5 billion on their mixed reality investments to date, and Apple has reported losing more than $1 billion each year in their quest to build a mixed reality headset. It is too early to determine the impact of these investments, but we will be tracking these developments and user experiences continuously from these early days to inform decision-makers as they lead the development of these exciting new platforms and tools.