SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE: THE EFFECTS OF THE "APPEAR TO BE" OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE REAL LIFE OF THE USERS

Abstract

This article is a research carried out in the internships II and III of the Psychology course at PUC Minas. It had as objectives to understand the effects of using social media, more specifically Instagram and its several tools, on the real life of the users based on the concept of Society of the Spectacle, introduced by Guy Debord, in association with Zygmunt Bauman's conception of Liquid Modernity. A bibliographic research was carried out to investigate existing studies on the subject and, in order to expand the data collected, a virtual form was developed and disseminated on social media, answered by 217 people between 18 and 48 years old, who reported their experiences using Instagram. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. It was possible to find both approximations and distances in relation to the bibliographic research, highlighting the reports of anxiety and comparison experiences from the use of Instagram nowadays, in contrast to the emphasis on feelings of inadequacy and anxiety described in other studies.