VR : Reality or an escape from it?

I found this book review very useful for my thoughts on this blog: Read

They talk about VR dependence; in a world, not so appealing, people escape into the virtual world. They even speak of a man who has a virtual version of his teenage friend. I find this terrifying! To believe that people would want to live in a world without real humans, with virtual versions of friendships: the comfort of reality with none of the hassle.

Our lecture spoke of the "passive nature of television" and how VR is more entertaining. Personally, I'm quite happy with the passiveness of TV. We can already see how violence on TV has numbed the next generation. We talk about children being desensitized by what they see on TV. I myself would say I have been desensitized: it takes a lot to scare me at this stage in my life. And yet these effects are classed as passive? If this is the effect passive television has on the World. Imagine what would happen with non-passive virtual reality. Personally I feel that's just asking for trouble. It's bad enough children play violent video games from a very young age, imagine the ability to go into a virtual horror movie and be chased by a psycho killer. Imagine being able to take over the character of a killer? In a virtual reality you lose the social bounds, the rules by which we live. In a virtual reality if you kill a person, big deal! If you commit other horrible acts, for which you would be jailed in real life and socially outcast, it doesn't matter. This has to be wrong. There have to be boundaries on what it is acceptable to do. However if you put up boundaries in virtual reality you defeat the point. The point of VR is to be free, to escape into a world with no rules. But what about consequence?

So bad enough with virtual reality we lose people who don't want to face the world, for whatever reason, we also create the possibility of a nation of completely emotionless human beings. Maybe I'm being over cautious, maybe I'm worrying about nothing. But....maybe I'm not. I'd be interested in what other people think?