Normalization of violence on social media: a case study with Costa Rican adolescents

The increasingly widespread use of technology and social media among adolescents involves exposure to dif-ferent types of violence. The objective of this study is to understand the influence of social media in the normal-ization of violence among Costa Rican adolescents. Using a qualitative approach and from digital sociology and through the method of case studies, focus groups and in-depth interviews were conducted with five ninth-grade students from a school in the province of Heredia. Through an inductive process, it was concluded that although social media, by themselves, do not determine the development of processes of normalization of violence, they consolidate as a channel of exposure to observed and experienced violence, as they are a social extension of the physical environment. Likewise, they become spaces of resignification from which some manifestations of vio-lence could be invisibilized, legitimized, and normalized.