Abstract:
ABSTRACT: After the Internet Revolution, people have started to spend most of their everyday time online carrying out
virtual activities. A limited number of studies tried to answer whether virtual activities match our real-world
(RW) activities. Moreover, to our knowledge, there was no study that dealt with these interrelations between
virtual and RW activities among the pathological and nonpathological users of the Internet (i.e. PIUs and
NPIUs). The primary aim of this study was to fill this gap and to investigate the correlations between virtualworld
(VW) and RW activities among PIUs and NPIUs. The secondary aim was to examine the perceptions of
the Internet and motivations to go online for PIUs and NPIUs. The third aim was to compare virtual and RW
activities across gender and age groups. The results indicated that correlations between most of the activities in
RW and VW were high among men and women, among age groups, and also among PIUs and NPUs. However,
beyond these similarities, perceptions of the Internet and motivations to browse into VW were differed among
PIUs and NPIUs. In other words, PIUs, but not NPIUs, perceived VW activities more gratified and had motivations
to go online for gratified functions.
