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Researchers and institutions have shown an increasing concern about how adolescents might misuse the Internet. Its psychological and behavioral impact often translate into the emergence of risk behaviors, school failure and family problems. Given the interest that this issue has generated on an increasingly wider scale, the aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to provide data to determine, from a descriptive point of view, what ex-acdy are the attitudes, perceptions and habits of adolescent Internet and social networks use and (2) a deeper understanding of the issue, contrib-uting to the design of prevention and control strategies which will encour-age a more rational and healthy Net use. On the basis of a survey of Com-pulsory Secondary School students from Galicia, which involved a total of 2339 individuals, the results obtained demonstrate the high level of Inter-net use penetration among die studied population and make it possible to gauge the magnitude of the problem with empirical data. Although the ob-tained numbers do not justify an alarmist attitude, they do indicate the need to implement specific action plans immediately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]