Attachments: The Colliding Worlds of Telepsychiatry, Social Media, and COVID-19

While flipping through my university's newspaper recently, I came across a startling headline: "Ditch Your Therapist, Start a Finsta."¹ A portmanteau of "fake" and "Instagram," Finstas are secondary Instagram accounts young people use to post less polished photos of themselves. Paradoxically meant to be more authentic than Rinsta (real + Instagram) accounts, Finstas are intended for small, curated audiences. The student journalist dispensed her advice boldly: "Finsta is a good place for all the minutiae you don't want to share with your therapist, don't have time to share with your therapist, or don't want to be completely honest or authentic with your therapist about."¹ Sure, I already knew my students and patients turned to social media for mental health advice. But the explicitness with which this author suggested carving up one's problems between social media and clinicians was striking.