Posypanova O.S., Posypanova S.O. Teenage Virtual Friendship as Psychological Phenomenon

Abstract: In connection with the development of the Internet and ubiquitous gadgets it became popular to be friends in virtual reality. This phenomenon is poorly studied in science. Virtual friendship (online friendship, friendship in social networks) is defined in the article as a kind of interaction on the Internet, when people are on the list of friends, but do not perform selfless close personal relationships. In their study the authors used questionnaires, testing, observation; the experiment was also conducted, during which they registered a non-existent teenager with minimal data about his biography and social preferences, with different pictures in one of the social networks. It was diagnosed who and how people make friends with an unknown man. It was revealed that over a half of teenagers add a stranger to their friend lists, the authors have also described other oxymorons of online friendship. It is determined that internet friendship is closely connected with sympathy, but weakly associated with Internet communication. Virtual friendship should be classified more as acquaintance. Virtual friendship is a powerful tool of teenage socialization. 

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