Nobody should masturbate. Masturbation is a grave matter and this is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about it:
**2352 **By *masturbation *is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action."137 “The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.” For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of “the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved.”
For those reasons, masturbation is always wrong and is considered gravely disordered. You were wise to look into it. You should also charitably correct your friend who is incorrect on this one.
,correct, and she in turn needs to bring this to the attention of the Priest who gave her that bad infornation (if indeed one did, I think sometimes people just say that they asked a Priest this or that when they probably didn’t.)