Adolescentes e internet: o risco como aposta

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the status of risk behaviors for adolescents in the contemporary world. The research came from listening to young people who participated in the research and extension project "Conversation in school: Adolescents and Social Networks", linked to the Research Group "Beyond the Screen: Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture", UFMG. This project was created to respond to a school demand due to complaints about the excessive and inappropriate use of electronic devices. When listening to young people, we were struck by the fact that they reported situations that seemed risky to us, such as conflicts on the Internet, offensive comments, the publication of intimate photos of colleagues, hacking into their game profiles, approaches to strangers in game chats and social networks, scheduling "fights" over the internet, as well as involvement in challenge-type games such as the Blue Whale, among others. However, many of these situations were considered by them to be perfectly normal and ordinary, leading us to question the adjacency of these behaviors. Our hypothesis was supported by the theoretical support of psychoanalysis, mainly based on the reading of Jacques Lacan's Seminar 16, from Another to Another, and consists in the assumption that in adolescence, the act, which is manifested through risk behaviors, constitutes a bet on the ex-sistence of the Other. For this study, we start with an anthropological and historical survey of adolescence, relating it to risk behaviors, according to anthropology, and to the act, in the psychoanalytic perspective. Then, as we examine the characteristics of contemporaneity, we establish a relationship between these acts and the unveiling of the inconsistency of the Other in our day.