Nintendo Japan says no 3DS for kids under six

Consumer electronics companies are betting that 3D is going to be the next big thing, and several are heavily promoting the latest 3D televisions. But the advent of consumer-level 3D has been accompanied by concerns about what effect the hardware might have on the human visual system. Although there's no evidence of harm, most of these companies have issued disclaimers warning against the use of this hardware by children. Now, Nintendo Japan has joined them, warning against the use of its upcoming 3DS system by anyone under the age of six.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the company posted the warning on its Japanese website in advance of an event promoting the device's February release. According to its translation, the company is warning that, "For children under the age of six, looking at 3D images for a long time could possibly have a negative impact on the growth of their eyes."

We'll hope that the "growth of their eyes" bit is just a bad translation. Concerns about the impact of 3D are based on the fact that, outside of holograms, no system is actually capable of generating an actual 3D image. Instead, various systems work by creating the illusion of depth by carefully manipulating the information received by the human visual system. In effect, 3D involves playing tricks on our ability to perceive depth.

None of this will harm the actual eye itself, much less any growth it undergoes during childhood. The concern is that the portions of our visual systems that reside in the brain are adaptive; they adjust to the information we receive, and can remap connections in order to operate more efficiently on a typical input. This is especially true in infants, as the visual system is still developing at the earliest stages of life. This ability to rewire our visual system on the fly is behind the 3D health concerns. If our brains are fed a heavy diet of 3D, they might start adjusting to process it more efficiently, and that process could come at the expense of regular vision.

As of now, however, there is no research indicating that there's a anything to these worries. The last time a 3D panic occurred—and they seem to occur every few years—we did an extensive literature search, and checked papers that people had pointed to as evidence of the technology's harm. Most addressed other topics, and the few studies that were relevant were small and involved short-term disorientation in adults. In short, Nintendo's warning may be reasonable and cautious, but it doesn't reflect a known health risk.

So far, factors other than health worries seem to be affecting the sales of 3D televisions, and it's probably safe to say that the sales of the 3DS will also be driven by the hardware, the price, and its game library.

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