With the development of the 5G era, digital media technology has been widely used in many fields and industries. Virtual reality is the product of the application of digital media technology in the development process. At the level of the continuous development and progress of social science and technology, virtual reality technology as a high-tech and high-tech tool has gradually entered people's vision, penetrated into all aspects of people's lives, and exerted good results. This article mainly studies the application of digital media technology based on 5G Internet of Things virtual reality technology as the carrier. This article introduces virtual reality technology, Quick Time VR technology that can be used in digital media, Tilt Brush VR technology, Oculus Quill technology, and digital media technology. It builds a virtual reality-based 3D model and digital media Internet of Things architecture, and implements 5G Comparison of technology and traditional technology, the proportion of applications of 5G Internet of Things virtual reality technology and digital media technology in education, construction, industry and medical fields. The analysis results show that the 5G Internet of Things has higher visual immersion, the original bandwidth can reach 5Tbit/s, and the calculation time of a single hologram is less than 3ms; 5G technology and virtual reality technology are both used in the medical field the most, with applications accounting for up to 40%; Digital media technology is the most widely used in the construction field, reaching 60%. It can be seen from the research in this article that the application of digital media technology based on the virtual reality technology of 5G Internet of Things as the carrier has high practical value in reality.