Episode 57: Does your kid have an IG account? How about a Finsta?

Rinsta and Finsta. Which does your kiddo have? This episode chats about the difference and what the implications may be for having this.

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 FULL TRANSCRIPTION:

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Have you ever heard of a Finsta? If you haven't, I'm right there with you. I never had either, but that's what we're going to chat about today. Stay tuned.

Speaker 2 (00:12):

Welcome to your source for tips, tools, and support to help you be that mom that is tuned in and proactive for yourself, your family, and for the wild ride of raising kids in this digital age, inspired by a mother's love with a relatable real life. Proud to be that mom flair. This is the bead that mom movement with your host, Dolly Denson, Holy moly. Check this out.

Speaker 1 (00:38):

You're a mom that is looking to give your kiddo a phone, but you don't want to open up the world of the smartphone to them yet. Check out the pinwheel phone. The pinwheel phone is the latest and greatest for dumb, smart phones. It gives you absolute control over what they do and who they can contact, and we'll help them to develop healthy habits around using a phone, check out pinwheel@pennwell.com use code, be that mom 10 for a discount. Okay. So we all know that there's no way that we can control every single aspect of all of the social media things, right? Like if you're going to allow your kid to have access to the digital world in some way that there's always going to be work around and leave it to our kids to be, what do I want to say, savvy enough to come up with these things?

Speaker 1 (01:29):

And it is quite amazing. So the biggest tool that you can have in your back pocket is open communication with your kiddo about their behavior online and what you do and do not approve of. And the consequences. If you discover that they have not followed these rules that you set in place. Okay. But what I'm talking about today, Finsta is basically you have what they call Rinsta. R I N S T a, which is a real Instagram account. And then there's a Finsta, which is a fake Instagram account. So a lot of kids will use this as an alternative at count that maybe their parents don't know about, or maybe they are just trying to get away, like fly under the radar. I guess, of someone or some entity, maybe it's a place where they post things that they don't want a college to be able to scope out.

Speaker 1 (02:27):

Maybe it's their silly side, where they just share things with close friends or vulnerable side or mischievous or illegal things, or just a place to get away from parents to where they don't feel like they're being watched. So I personally did not know that this was a thing until my two youngest, Ron Instagram. And I actually stumbled upon one of theirs on accident because I opened up another Instagram account. It was for this podcast. I had my regular Instagram account that I'd had for years. And I went and made another account to open it up for the podcast. And when I did that, I connected it to my contacts on my phone. And it immediately popped up one of my kiddos extra account. And I was like, what in the world? What is this? Like, I had been watching their other Instagram accounts to see what they were posting.

Speaker 1 (03:22):

And if you haven't noticed some like, particularly boys will tend to have an Instagram account that they don't post a thing on. And you're like, why do they want to be on Instagram? They never post anything. And like I've said in episodes ago, what they're often doing is they're just there to look at content or they're just there to communicate through the messages. Okay. So it's not that they're not on there and doing things they're just not posting publicly to their account. Okay. So you may be watching their account and you're like, I don't have anything to worry about because they never posted anything. Anyway, there's still a lot of danger lurking on there and it doesn't just have to do with them posting anything. People can get to them through the messages. They can get content by who they follow and who they message and what content is sent to them, from friends, all of that stuff.

Speaker 1 (04:10):

Okay. So there's a lot of things that are lurking underneath the surface there that you have to look into. But when I made this other account, then it popped up. Here's some people that you may want to follow with this new account. And one of these was my kids' extra account. And so I addressed that and said, okay, I'm okay with you having another account, but why is it secretive? And why did you not tell me about it? And so we had a discussion there for that, but at the same time, it was quite disconcerting to discover this. And I thought I had a handle on all the things, right. I sewed did not handle, have a handle on all the things at that time. Like that was the tip of the iceberg. But so a Finsta is a fake Instagram account. The purpose of it is, you know, will vary depending on your kiddo and what their intentions are.

Speaker 1 (05:02):

But good news about this is that if you have something like bark set up, it will detect. If there's another account I have had notifications sent to me that says, my kid is act, you know, your kid says their name is active on. It says something like we see that blink, your kid is using an Instagram account. Do you want to monitor that? Or do you want to set it up? It says something like that, that alerted me to things going on that I wasn't aware of. So, so there is that that bark will pick things up like that. But bottom line is nothing is a hundred percent. They can always go and open other accounts. And so you just have to be aware that there's always that risk there. Now, a thing that you could do to get around that is taking their phones up at night and having their logins to all of their things and setting up the rules and the boundaries around their use.

Speaker 1 (05:58):

And that if you like them being clear and knowing that if you discover that they have these other accounts and have been dishonest with you, that there will be consequences, you know, reasonably speaking up to a certain age. And that is also a decision between you and your kid and, and their, you know, their age and how you feel that they can function on social media. So I guess ultimately what I'm saying is everybody can decide for themselves how you want to operate, but I can tell you that there's a number of years there where curiosity is high and what do I want to call it? Like realistic judgment of risks? Is that a good way to say it is not there? And so you have to figure out a happy medium between giving some independence and some privacy, but also keeping them closely monitored because the discretion of risks is not yet there.

Speaker 1 (06:57):

They say that that doesn't like fully develop until their early twenties. So, you know, it's just one of those things for the teenage years that you know, that they're not going to kind of get all of the risks. And so you kind of have to help guide them with those things and social media and all the digital things just basically puts a huge, extra layer on all of that. And all of us trying to monitor everything and navigate everything. And that's of course, while you're here listening to my podcast, right? So anyways, today I just wanted to talk about that in case you had never heard of it. I've actually known that this is a thing for quite a while because of my kids having it and me discovering it. And ultimately, I don't think it's necessarily going to be a bad thing, but it's up to you to decide what the rules are around it and you know what you want to have access and not have access to, but of course, putting bark on their device and then all the other monitoring things that I always talk about can certainly help you to navigate it as well.

Speaker 1 (07:52):

Okay. So I hope that was helpful for you and I will chat with you next time.

Speaker 2 (08:00):

Thanks for tuning in being that mom isn't easy, but together we can be that mom's strong. Don't forget to leave a review, connect on social and join Dolly's free community till next time. Hey,

Speaker 1 (08:14):

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