Recent years have seen an exponential increase in the use of social networks in the context of Internet, being facebook actually the most used social network worldwide, namely by adolescents. . Therefore, it becomes relevant, from the psychological and social point of view, to understand what role this tool plays in the lives of adolescents. The main goal of this work is to understand the positions of teenagers over the use of social network facebook in particular regarding the public / private, real / virtual, risk / benefit dichotomies and the concept of friendship. This study used the qualitative research method of focus groups, attended by 20 teenagers, divided into 3 groups, controlled for age and socioeconomic status. The results showed that adolescents distinguish between the private and public dimension of the use of social networking; that they use the social network facebook to know what happens in the lives of others as well as to communicate with friends and family. The results also showed that in some situations adolescents find it easier to share online some issues than in face-to-face context and that with regard to the concept of friendship in social network, it often works as an extension of the real-life friendships.
Facebook; adolescence; focus groups