Online communication via avatars provides a richer online social experience than text communication. This reinforces the importance of online social support. Online social support is effective for people who lack social resources because of the anonymity of online communities. We aimed to understand online social support via avatars and their social relationships to provide better social support to avatar users. Therefore, we administered a questionnaire to three avatar communication service users (Second Life, ZEPETO, and Pigg Party) and three text communication service users (Facebook, X, and Instagram) (N=8,947). There was no duplication of users for each service. By comparing avatar and text communication users, we examined the amount of online social support, stability of online relationships, and the relationships between online social support and offline social resources (e.g., offline social support). We observed that avatar communication service users received more online social support, had more stable relationships, and had fewer offline social resources than text communication service users. However, the positive association between online and offline social support for avatar communication users was more substantial than for text communication users. These findings highlight the significance of realistic online communication experiences through avatars, including nonverbal and real-time interactions with co-presence. The findings also highlighted avatar communication service users' problems in the physical world, such as the lack of offline social resources. This study suggests that enhancing online social support through avatars can address these issues. This could help resolve social resource problems, both online and offline in future metaverse societies.

Early detection of bipolar disorder (BD) is crucial for its ultimate control and prevention. We aim to detect people with BD and their manic/hypomanic episodes through their abnormal behaviors of following peers in Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) logs. The total participants consisted of 198,605 users of Pigg Party: a popular MMOG in Japan. Their behaviors, including gacha (an online capsule toy game) and purchase in MMOG, were recorded in milli seconds for one month. Of the total participants, 291 responded to the mood disorder questionnaire. Among the questionnaire respondents, 20 were judged as BD group and the other 271 as non-BD group. According to the anomaly scores of the behaviors of following peers, 13,650 of the total participants were estimated as BD group and the other 184,955 participants as non-BD group. Among the total participants, the BD group had significantly more gacha and purchase behaviors than the non-BD group. Further, among this BD group, these behaviors were significantly more prevalent especially during manic/hypomanic episodes. Our findings indicate that behaviors of following peers in MMOG logs is potentially useful for detecting BD and manic/hypomanic episodes.