Cyborg Children: A Systematic Literature Review on the Experience of Children Using Extended Reality

This literature review presents a comprehensive and systematic account of research on the experiences of children with extended reality (XR), including VR, AR, and other types of immersive technologies that enhance and augment children’s activities. The search on Scopus and Web of Science produced 531 outputs. Content analysis with inter-rater reliability (Krippendorff’s α) and Leximancer, a software for text mining, were used for analyzing the material. Four research strands were identified: (1) interventions, treatments, and medical procedures in clinical contexts; (2) teaching and learning enhanced by XR; (3) children’s adoption and user experiences; (4) design and prototyping of XR hardware and software for children. The results showed the following findings: (a) studies on children’s clinical interventions and treatments using HMD-supported immersive virtual reality comprise the most substantial strand of studies; (b) research in this area, and in teaching and learning studies, has grown dramatically since 2017, while the other areas have been stagnant over the years; (c) AR research is still limited and is mainly applied in educational contexts for design and prototyping; (d) few studies have considered children’s perspectives on XR safety issues; (e) research on the use of XR for enhancing social and emotional skills development is underrepresented. Future research should focus on the potential of XR technologies for interventions to enhance children’s psychosocial wellbeing and health more broadly. The further implications and study limitations for the fast-developing nature of this transdisciplinary research field are also discussed.