If you an active user of Instagram in 2018, you might have seen your friends make finstas for posting their shenanigans or personal images. If you have no idea what a finsta is, it stands for fake Instagram. Plenty of young people keep a public handle for posting their more filtered, posed, or serious images. These profiles are the ones that will come up easily when their name is searched. A finsta, however, is normally some obscure handle with a vague bio and an unrecognizable profile picture. They are almost always private, so anyone not approved to follow them will be able to see their content.
When the topic of finstas comes up, most kids will say they created one just so that they can be themselves, to share content only their closest friends will see. Some people don't want the world to be able to see their personal images of a goofy face, or a caption about their day. Everyone is entitled to privacy online, whether you want to make a finsta or not.
Quite a few of my friends have made a finsta to use alongside their main public profiles. When they ask why I don't have one, I just shrug my shoulders and say I don't feel the need. In response to that, my friend said, "Mia is just an open book." I wouldn't say that, but I've noticed that many of my peers with finstas that I follow use them for posting self-deprecating images and captions. Or a place to post their very personal issues.
I can understand the attempt at coping with a finsta—as a place to release stress and sadness, or vent about life. To me, though, I feel that sharing such personal details on the internet and into the void doesn't solve anything. It would feel more like a cry for attention from the twenty people I allow to follow my profile. I don't know much about the law of attraction, but what I do think is if we dwell on our negative emotions too much (and enough so to take a sad picture, write out a caption, and share it to an app), those emotions will continue to fester and never go away.
I'm not an open book. I do tend to be more transparent online, sharing my past personal struggles with mental illness, but I don't feel the need to let everyone close to me know when I'm in the midst of a meltdown or crisis. If I need help or support, I know I can contact my circle of friends or family personally, so as not to overshare or make a bigger deal of my issues.
Listen, if you have a finsta and enjoy it—all power to you. For me, I see them as another way social media separates our online lives from our personal lives. Maybe coping with a private Instagram account works for you, and that's great! But maybe, in the midst of a problem, it is healthier and more supportive to contact a friend or family member directly instead.
