Page 129 - Kaleidoscope Academic Conference Proceedings 2022

MAKING EXTENDED REALITY SAFE AND SECURE FOR TEENAGERS WITH
PARGUARD

Agasthya Gangavarapu, Researcher, Safety4XR.org

1. INTRODUCTION

Extended Reality (XR) is expected to grow exponentially with significant investments from big tech companies such as Meta
and the introduction of related and supporting new technologies such as web3, blockchain, etc. Like other technologies, most
of the discussion and analysis is focused on the positive benefits of XR technologies and systems at the inception stage. If
history was any guide, then the negative impacts of XR technologies with ultra-personalization capabilities and advanced
immersive technologies are likely to be much worse, especially for teenagers. Based on the current direction of regulations
and laws related to the use of technologies, including social media and XR, the current expectation is that parents ‘regulate’
the usage of the technologies and nudge their teenage children away from the ill effects of XR technologies [1]. This is an
unreasonable expectation and an onerous burden placed on the parents given personalized algorithms and the fast-changing
nature of the underlying technologies. ParGuard, a smartphone-based app system, is designed to help parents to navigate
through a maze of technologies and ultra-personalization algorithms, and guard children from the ill effects of new
technologies.

2. PARENTAL PROBLEMS

Most concerned parents have signed up with social media platforms to provide any guidance needed for their children.
While these practices have worked to a certain extent with current social media because of limited algorithmic
personalization, the parents get to see the same posts and to a certain extent similar ads as their children [2]. However,
personalization algorithms and immersive experiences of XR technologies are driven by the history of interactions, and
implicit preferences of the users. Parents are served with totally different experiences because their interaction history and
ongoing choices are different from that of their children. Also, parents need to understand the contextual background
when their children are having a negative emotional response such as stress or loss of appetite.

3. PARGUARD

To help parents to track their children’s XR platform activity and provide contextual guidance, I am developing ParGuard.
There are three components to the solution in development: a harvester component for each of the XR platforms, a
smartphone app for parents to enter the teen’s emotional details and get insights, and a cloud-based server for classifying
impactful events and actions.

Harvester component

The first component of the ParGuard system is the Harvester. The component is customized for each of the popular XR
devices like Meta’s Oculus Quest and is installed and activated with the child’s account. Once activated, the component
captures emotional information such as mental fatigue [3], cognitive load [4], toxic interactions, etc. using the cameras,
sensors, and others. The Harvester sends the information securely to a cloud-based server for synthesis and generating insights
[5].

978-92-61-36151-8/CFP2268P @ ITU 2022 – 83 – Kaleidoscope