The Most Social Platform Ever? A Survey about Activities & Motives of Social VR Users

We present online survey results on social virtual reality (social VR) users' activities and usage motives. Based on content analysis of users' free-text responses, we found that most users, in fact, use these applications for social activities and to satisfy diverse social needs. The second most frequently mentioned categories of activities and motives relate to experiential aspects such as entertainment activities. Another important category of motives, which has only recently been described in related work, relates to the self, such as personal growth. Our results indicate that while social VR provides a superior social experience than traditional digital social spaces, like games or social media, users still desire better and affordable tracking technology, increased sensory immersion, and further improvement concerning social features. These findings complement related work as they come from a comparatively large sample (N= 273) and summarize a general user view on social VR. Besides confirming an intuitive assumption, they help identify use cases and opportunities for further research on social VR.