Teenagers are called the community group with the highest intensity of Internet use. They play the Internet with an average time allocation of 30 percent for social media. Most teenagers have Instagram accounts other than the main account to disguise their identity with fake ids. topfakeid while hiding their social media activities from their parents. Even now the terms f-Insta or fake Instagram and r-Insta alias real Instagram appear. F-Insta and R-Insta are two worlds that allow teenagers to transform into two different people without the people closest to them knowing.
With f-Insta, they are free to upload and write anything, including rude comments on other people’s accounts. Meanwhile, r-Insta is to build a positive image. Why do teens need to express themselves (negatively) on social media? A psychologist from Brigham Young University, Utah, United States, Lee Essig Thunnel, said teenagers need a place to release negative emotions.
When stressed, disappointed, or sad, they like to vent their feelings to get rid of negative emotions. When they feel relieved after venting it on social media, it becomes the beginning of addictive behavior. It’s not about gratification in the form of comments and attention from netizens, but more about how to get out of pain.
It’s possible that your child hasn’t created a fake account and hasn’t declined friend requests with you on social media, but that doesn’t mean they can’t hide. Currently, Instagram is equipped with a close friend setting, which allows account owners to choose who can see their uploads. There is also a hidden story that allows them to determine who is not allowed to see uploaded videos on the Instagram Story feature.
If you know your child is an active user on Instagram, but never saw his latest post, you should suspect that they are hiding something. So, how to make sure your teen’s activities on social media are really healthy and nothing is hidden?
Try to communicate, build trust, and be fun friends in real and virtual worlds. Speak from heart to heart so that children don’t need a place to escape in the form of fake accounts on social media.
No less important, you must be sensitive to the emotional state of the child. Unhealthy behavior on social media can be seen from the daily psychological and physical conditions of children. Notice if he seems gloomy, restless, or addicted to devices? If so, beware. It could be that something is not right with your teen’s life in cyberspace.
Through social media, it is not only easier to interact remotely, each user has the opportunity to describe or create their identity which is usually displayed in the profile feature. After that, the account is used to interact with fellow users virtually until enjoying the information you want to get.
The activities carried out with social media produce another model of communication,namely communication computer-based or so-called Computer-Mediated Communication. CMC is an activity of interaction between people carried out using an intermediary, namely a computer. CMC with the internet can function as a dimension of social identity for its users. People can communicate with each other using computers or networks where they have the opportunity to talk, exchange ideas and opinions, and assume their own character.
