Many people are now spending hours each week living in a virtual world. They play an online game called 'Second Life'. Here people create their own personalized avatars in an online virtual world and go about consuming, flirting, and finding their passions much as they would in the real world.

There are now over four million people inhabiting Second Life. Researchers recently looked at how the avatars interact socially and compared this to real world behavior. They found that "personal space matters even in the virtual world: Male and female avatars keep a physical distance from each other in the same way that men and women do. Pairs of male avatars tend to stay away from each other the furthest while female-female pairs stay physically closest to each other. Male-male pairs also exchange least eye contact while female avatar pairs look at each other most."