This past month has been one of violence and extraordinary tension. I spend a lot of time listening to NPR during my commute, and of the five big stories in the last two weeks, four involved shootings. Yet one story to make it on the list was the release of Pokémon Go [1].

In only a week this augmented-reality (AR) game has become the most popular Android app in North America, topping Tinder, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook. Having established the popular potential of AR, it is safe to assume that Pokemon Go will soon see stiff competition from other AR titles. Thanks to the efforts of companies like HTC, Facebook, and Sony, virtual reality (VR) is also becoming increasingly widespread, offering even more possibilities than AR; a quick audit of popular reportage mentions that VR could revolutionize arcades, help people understand conservation, and transport people to a Syrian refugee camp, the Bronze Age, and someday even Mars. There are obvious entertainment applications as well.

With this in mind, I believe Joanna Stern is correct when she asserts that, “you’re going to own a virtual reality headset someday.” Indeed, when I first saw Valve’s recent VR demo my own reaction was pure desire: I wanted that experience for myself. The possibility of being immersed in the world Valve has created is compelling to me in a way that few possibilities have ever been. But in the weeks that followed I came to question the possible repercussions of my burning desire for this ultimate escape, a form of escapism that could ultimately detract from pressing problems in novel ways.

Take, for example, the issue of surveillance. Thanks to Edward Snowden, the digitally-mediated surveillance of the world’s citizenry is common knowledge. Yet presently, this data must be assembled from a panoply of disparate sources. How much more efficient would this spying become if we spent our time in a single virtual space, tethered to a single device and interacting with a single platform? Or perhaps we should consider the psychological implications of interacting with a technology that is “uniquely powerful” in its ability to affect our perceptions. What falsehoods might we come to believe if we spend too much time in a virtual space?

Moreover, what might we ignore here in the real world if we escape too far into a virtual reality? The fundamental conflicts that have driven these last two weeks of violence are so longstanding and so overwhelming that it will likely take our utmost concerted efforts to overcome them. There is evidence that this effort is being made, but what these problems need is more awareness, more commitment, and more engagement - the very resources we might waste whenever we put on a VR headset or launch an AR app. Can we afford to invest time and energy into developing a technology that will go farther than the average distraction, to the point where we leave our current reality, and all the problems that come with it?

There is a case to be made that VR could be the very technology that allows us to educate in an unprecedented way. Its immersive nature could help us better understand the experiences and adversities of others by literally putting ourselves in their shoes. This empathic potential could alter discourse and action surrounding pressing issues for the better, so VR enthusiasts claim. What these comments miss perhaps is the fact that while technology may enable, it does not mandate. Humans must be the ones to choose action over passivity, and often we don’t.

Left unchecked, the violence from which distract ourselves may redound upon us. What we might miss in our quest for escape is deftly underlined in this passage from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451:

… He saw her leaning toward the great shimmering walls of color and motion where the family talked and talked and talked to her, where the family prattled and chatted and said her name and smiled at her and said nothing of the bomb that was an inch, now a half inch, now a quarter inch from the top of the hotel… leaning anxiously, nervously, as if to plunge, drop, fall into that swarming immensity of color to drown in its bright happiness.

Here a woman eagerly drowns herself in sound and color; simultaneously, the bomb that falls to destroy her is an instant away. What bombshell are we missing when we choose the seductive sound and color of VR? And what might we accomplish if we face the real world instead?

[1] Players navigate the real world and use smartphones to collect virtual Pokémon. Players become more powerful as they catch more Pokémon. Many real-world locations also have in-game significance