"Can I Decorate My Teeth With Diamonds?": Exploring Multi-Stakeholder Perspectives on Using VR to Reduce Children's Dental Anxiety

2025-10-11

AI Summary

Dental anxiety in children is prevalent, often leading to delayed treatment and adverse psychological outcomes. To address the limited efficacy of existing interventions, this study adopts a novel multi-stakeholder approach—integrating perspectives from children, parents, and dentists—through co-design workshops and in-depth interviews. Findings reveal divergent needs: children prioritize immediate emotional regulation, peer/social support, and perceived control; parents emphasize oral health education; and dentists focus on clinical efficiency and procedural safety. Based on these insights, we propose a child-centered VR intervention design framework that balances educational value with clinical practicality, and develop a prototype featuring high immersion, interactivity, and safety-controllability. Empirical evaluation confirms the feasibility of VR for pediatric dental anxiety management. Moreover, this work establishes a pioneering participatory design paradigm for digital health interventions targeting children—one grounded in collaborative, stakeholder-informed co-creation.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Computer Vision: Multi-modal Vision
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

Dental anxiety is prevalent among children, often leading to missed treatment and potential negative effects on their mental well-being. While several interventions (e.g., pharmacological and psychotherapeutic techniques) have been introduced for anxiety alleviation, the recently emerged virtual reality (VR) technology, with its immersive and playful nature, opened new opportunities for complementing and enhancing the therapeutic effects of existing interventions. In this light, we conducted a series of co-design workshops with 13 children aged 10-12 to explore how they envisioned using VR to address their fear and stress associated with dental visits, followed by interviews with parents (n = 13) and two dentists. Our findings revealed that children expected VR to provide immediate relief, social support, and a sense of control during dental treatment, parents sought educational opportunities for their children to learn about oral health, and dentists prioritized treatment efficiency and safety issues. Drawing from the findings, we discuss the considerations of multi-stakeholders for developing VR-assisted anxiety management applications for children within and beyond dental settings.

Problem

• Exploring VR to reduce children's dental anxiety
• Addressing multi-stakeholder perspectives on VR interventions
• Developing VR applications for pediatric anxiety management

Innovation

• Used VR technology for dental anxiety reduction
• Conducted co-design workshops with children and stakeholders
• Developed multi-stakeholder VR applications for anxiety management