The idea of using fictional characters to represents the human is one of the fundamental components of Indo-European culture and finds new expression thanks to the Internet and the development of virtual worlds. The avatar, the digital representation of a real « player », is the talk of the town in recent years mainly because of the success of Second Life, the most famous of these universes.
The way that the avatar is constructed expresses the compromise between freedom of expression offered by the virtual and the emergence of social structures proper to human beings.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°3, pp. 621-629.