Instagram is more popular than ever, especially with kids. This video shows you how to enable a Private Account on Instagram (it's more buried than you would think) which is the first step to preserving the experience and protecting your child.

This is part two of my three-part series on Understanding Instagram. Read part one here.

What in the round world is a Finstagram?

Well, if you think about it, Instagram is nothing but perfectly curated photo posts making life appear pretty perfect. At least, with teens. Because with teenagers who won’t speak up in Bible class because they’re afraid they’ll be made fun of for what they say would never post anything on Instagram that wasn’t perfect. 

There’s a side to everyone that we see represented on social media - the perfect selfies, the glamorous events, the beautiful friends. But there’s also a side that we don’t take pictures of - the time we spilled a whole gallon of milk on the kitchen floor or just waking up with bed head in the morning. The latter is more real life, and teens have taken to creating Finstagrams (or fake Instagrams) as a way of sharing photos from their lives that they may not want anyone to see. 

Don’t jump to conclusions here - most teens aren’t creating these to share inappropriate or naked photos of themselves - Instagram is pretty good at not allowing that. But the thing to remember here is that even if everything they are sharing is harmless, they still have an account that you as a parent do not know about. 

Ask your kids if they have a Finstagram and you’re likely to get some raised eyebrows. 

Think about this. As a teen, you never wanted to hang out with your parents - in fact, it was the last thing you wanted to do. You just wanted to be wherever they were not, even if that meant hanging out in the grocery store parking lot. 

Teens have moved that mentality to the digital space. They have made false identities and fake accounts because they want to express their creativity and their independence. The fear with something like Finstagram is that they can so easily be lured to something that is detrimental to their Christian walk - and that they are keeping something from you. 

Finstagrams should be a teaching tool for us as parents to tell our kids that it’s completely okay to be just who you are on social media just as in real life. There is a growing disconnect in young people where they separate their digital lives with their real ones - and we need to be teaching the opposite. That your digital life and real life go hand in hand. We’re all living on these devices now, and if we’re trying to hide something, that’s wrong.

If you think your child may have a Finstagram, simply open the Instagram account on their phone, tap on the Profile icon at the bottom right corner, and see if they have any additional accounts listed under their main account. Kids are likely following their own Finstagrams and so are their close friends, so looking at who they follow is important as well. 

This is part one of my three-part series about Understanding Instagram. 

Instagram is my happy place. It's where my perfectly curated collection of things I like to look at is all consolidated into one feed. I go there not only to just keep up with friends, but also look at things that interest me. 

A ministry friend called me up recently and told me that he was speaking with someone in his congregation about an addiction to pornography. Oddly enough, he said that he was told by this individual that the thing that kept tripping him up was the Search & Explore section on Instagram. 

I'll be honest - very rarely do I use this feature on the Instagram app. I pretty much follow who and what I want to follow and I look through my Stories and Feed daily. But if you tap on that tab at the bottom of the app (labeled as a simple magnifying glass), you might be surprised what you find. 

A screenshot of the Search & Explore tab on my account. Basically just Star Wars, Nintendo, and knives. 

According to Instagram, the Search & Explore section does this: 

Posts are selected automatically based on things like the people you follow or the posts you like. You may also see video channels, which can include posts from a mixture of hand-picked and automatically sourced accounts based on topics we think you’ll enjoy.

Instagram, just like an social network, doesn't have people picking stuff out for you, it allows an algorithm to do that. And that algorithm is basing what it shows you in that Search & Explore section based upon who you're following and the posts that you have liked. That second part is much more telling: Instagram will inject their own hand-picked accounts into your Search & Explore tab based upon what they think you might enjoy. 

So, let's say a 21-year old young man follows just a few Instagram accounts that contain violence, vulgar music, or scantily-clad women. And based upon his likes on those accounts that he follows, the Search & Explore feed is going to show him more and more of that kind of stuff. 

So is there any way to disable the S&E feed? No. Is there any way to keep it locked down so you can still use Instagram? No, not unless you use Instagram through the browser, which doesn't let you use the S&E feature but also doesn't allow you to post anything. 

So what's the solution here? Just as I've said before on countless occasions, there is no substitute for you having your child's username and password and logging into their account every week. If you allow your children to have an Instagram account, you need to be making sure that you know everything that happens on said account. 

The most obvious way to avoid seeing content you don't want is to unfollow the accounts in question. You probably don't want to go unlike every photo, but eventually the algorithm will figure out that this content isn't of interest to you any longer. Creating a new account and archiving the old one is also an option, but make sure your child doesn't create extra Finstagrams, or fake Instagram accounts (which I'll talk about in an upcoming post) nor should your child have access to the old account. 

Obviously, digital parenting is a real thing. We as parents are getting dizzy on the ever-shifting landscape of apps and social media trying to keep up with our teens. But don't give up and don't give in. Protect your child, bring them up in the Lord. 

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