IT’S BEEN SAID a millions time over – social media is a double-edged sword.

On one hand, it’s a great way of keeping in touch with friends, it delivers a wealth of information to you quickly, and if you’ve enough ‘influence’ you can get a job of it.

However, nobody needs to be reminded of the negatives that also come part and parcel with it, what with the whole data harvesting thing …

Besides that, increasingly, people are struggling with the social and societal pressure that comes with having a social media account. That might sound dramatic for adult users. But on apps like Instagram, where photoshopping and FaceTuning is the norm, it can be extremely damaging for adolescents.

Even beyond aesthetics, apps encourage us to share the best moments of our lives, shying away from the negatives or even the plain and mundane. Where do they escape to then, when real life is looking less than Valencia-filtered?

Enter, the finstagram.

Or ‘finsta’, if you’d prefer. Short for ‘fake Instagram’, it’s an account set up to exist alongside your main account where everything is rosie in the garden. ‘Finstas’ aim to reflect memories you want to share that are more reflective of you real life, or ones that you just want to share with a select group of people.

In simpler terms – say you have loads of GAS photos from a night out in which yer all bleary eyed drink or asleep in your chips in Supermacs. It’s that kind of vibe.

Grand, but what’s the point?

A sample of Australian teenagers examined by researcher Joanne Orlando found that private, less visible accounts allow them the opportunity to move away from the carefully cultivated, public persona on their real Instagram account – and present a rawer, “this-is-the-real-me” personality to a smaller group of closer friends.

Finstas have their own benefits, too - they allow the focus of social media use to shift in a positive way. People can move away from posting perfect photos, and garnering high likes and instantaneous validation, to a focus on presenting themselves and their ideas in a more authentic way.

It also allows people to get more perspective on what their friends are doing, especially after combining the information from their “official” accounts and their more authentic finstas.

The arguments against are kind of obvious – why should you feel like you have to censor your own feed? Who cares what people think of your no makeup selfies! Why go to the hassle of making a second account to be yourself on when you could … Just be yourself on your main account?

But what do you reckon? Have you – or would you – set up a ‘finstagram’ account?

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