The case for having a 'finsta' as an adult

This is You Won't Regret It, a new weekly column featuring recommendations, tips, and unsolicited advice from the Mashable culture team.

Perhaps you're familiar with "finstas," the secondary Instagram accounts used primarily by Teens™ to post photos they don't want to share on their primary accounts. (The word "finsta" is a portmanteau of "fake" and "Insta.")

Finstas can house a wide variety of pics, from shitposts to risqué selfies to hyper-specific memes the user only wants their best friends to see. They're generally private, with highly curated followings -- it's not uncommon for finsta accounts to only have 10-15 followers. Unless you've been invited to follow someone's finsta, it's generally impossible to tell who the account belongs to. It's essentially a secret, unfiltered Instagram oasis.

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And while the finsta might seem like a phenomenon strictly for the teens, I'm here to recommend making one at any age. After all, you never really grow out of self-indulgence.

Instagram, like all other social media apps, is a platform for anxiety. There are unspoken rules: your images should fit an aesthetic standard. You shouldn't post too much. You should be judicious about whose Stories you're watching and when.

On your finsta, those rules go out the window faster than your aunt can slap a Nashville filter on some flowers. Suddenly, you can post whatever you want: a half-eaten doughnut you saw on the ground, a text from a crush, an incredible selfie that happens to be lit poorly. You can post long journal entries with no details spared. You can post highly-filtered photos of your manicure, or dozens of Stories about how good you are at the mobile version of The Sims. You can be as honest, as indulgent, as prolific, as performative as you want. And the only people who can see it -- the only people who know you're doing it at all -- are the ones you've selected yourself.

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Of course, there are a few best practices for the finsta user. Most importantly, you must be extremely picky about who you allow to follow you. Do you trust them? Do you want them to see your gorgeous, authentic Insta vomit every day? If you're even a little unsure, don't accept the request. One of the advantages of a finsta is that follower counts don't matter. And it's more awkward to have to soft block a follower later.

It makes sense that the finsta is a teen phenomenon. Functionally, it's similar to the LiveJournal of the mid-aughts, earnestly toeing the line between social network and diary. But the desire to communicate without perceived restriction isn't unique to teens. We all want to share dumb posts sometimes. So why not pick a username with a 420 joke in it and get finstagramming? You have nothing to lose -- no one will know you did it. Unless you want them to.

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