News.blog: 'Second Life' helps Asperger's

Can online avatars help you? Sometimes, asserted Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life, an online massively multiplayer world where people create their own products and lead imagined lives.

In one experiment, a small island was set up for patients with Asperger's syndrome, he said at PC Forum in Carlsbad, California. People with the disease are uncomfortable with social situations. The island created for them contained artificial, difficult social situations. Some patients said it helped them later in some aspects of real life, according to Rosedale.

There are roughly 150,000 participants in Second Life, he said.

Second Life is also used for escapism, Rosedale stated. Most people can fly, he noted. It would also be difficult to substitute it for real life, though. You could conceivably spend an inordinate amount of time designing the ultimate virtual salad dressing, but then die of starvation in the real world.