Wait, It’s Time to BeReal
Can Social Media really be “real”?
—By Aanya Rampuria
Wake up. Go to class. Shower. BeReal. This is the schedule of your average college student these days.
“Wait, it’s time to BeReal” has become one of the most frequently heard phrases on college campuses. Prior to the app’s emergence, people might be thinking that their friends were about to open up about something deeply personal. Nowadays, though, the phrase elicits camera-ready smiles and peace-signs. It is shocking to see how quickly the BeReal app has become a staple in students’ day-to-day lives.
What is BeReal?
BeReal was founded in 2020 by French entrepreneurs Alexis Barreyat and Kévin Perreau. Their simple purpose is embodied through their direct and succinct slogan: “Your Friends. For Real.” At a random time every day, BeReal users receive a notification letting them know that they have two minutes to post a photo of what they are doing at that exact moment, whether it be doing school work at the library, waking up from a midday nap, or walking through the beautiful fall foliage. Akin to many social media apps, you create a community by adding “friends” who you interact with either by reacting to their BeReal through an image reaction or by commenting on their posts. BeReal’s most unique feature, though, is that you cannot view your friends’ posts until you have posted. This is one of the elements that U-M senior Charlotte Moss appreciated about the app when she was using it. She said, “I liked that you had to post to be able to see what your friends are up to as this almost motivated me to post in the moment rather than just passively viewing other people’s posts. That is definitely something I would’ve done without this feature. I always do that on apps like Instagram and Facebook.”
BeReal’s ethos of authenticity comes at a time when social media is becoming increasingly negative and is frequently cited as one of the major contributing factors to adolescent’s decline in mental health. Claire Sibboney, in her article cites research demonstrating that the amount of time people spend on social media platforms can impact their overall mental health. She summarizes the research, stating that “for girls specifically, the link between worsened mental health and increased social media use is greater than that between poor mental health and binge drinking, hard drug use, and other alarming risk factors.” This idea is further reinforced by Jas Saran’s article in Forbes, which asserts, “When you’re constantly exposed to idealized versions of other people’s lives, it can be difficult not to compare your life to theirs (even when they aren’t realistic depictions).”
Saran’s discussion of unrealistic presentations of lives on social media is part of an ongoing debate on the concept of filters, photo editing, and likes. Extensive research has been conducted on the ways a “like” can affect you cognitively. Eames Yates in Business Insider explains this further, claiming that “When someone likes an Instagram post, or any content that you share, it’s a little bit like taking a drug. As far as your brain is concerned, it’s a very similar experience.” This cognitive experience can lead to an obsession with the number of likes or the amount of engagement someone gets on a post, taking away from the community-driven experience that Instagram had intended upon creating their app. This is ultimately what led to Instagram’s revolutionary change to provide users with an option to hide their like count, with the hope that it would relieve the pressure of sharing content on the app.
The concept of likes and a follower count is absent from BeReal’s design. In fact, BeReal’s bio on TikTok describes the app as: “No filters. No followers. No ads. No bullshit,” which perfectly encapsulates the app’s goal to distort the perception that all social media is fake or is simply a display of people’s lives as a highlight reel. With its rapid rise to the second most popular social networking app on the App Store, many assume that the founders’ mission was accomplished. However, one is still forced to question how successful the app has really been in achieving their goal.
Experiences with BeReal
U-M junior Kat Stravos commends the app because it is “the only app where [she] can see [her] friends doing normal and mundane things, like studying or just watching TV,” elements of people’s lives that she feels are not usually shown or shared on apps like Instagram and Facebook. The push to truly be real is further encouraged by the app’s emphasis on timing. If you do not post right when you are notified, your friends can see how many hours “late” you posted since receiving the notification. Late posting implies that this post is not what the person was doing exactly when the notification was broadcasted, further pushing people to show what they are really doing at the time. The shift in the emphasis from likes and comments is also exemplified by the app’s “photo reactions,” where friends actively showcase their reactions as opposed to hiding behind a well-thought-out comment behind their screens. The barrier that is created by phones and language is thus broken down by this feature of the app; you see rather than interpret your friends’ reactions.
U-M Senior Fernanda Medici Sousa, on the other hand, admitted that “although BeReal has definitely found a way to be different from any other social media platforms,” she still sometimes “fail[s] to see the purpose of the app.” She argued that “in theory, the app has a great concept” and she “can see the appeal” but she isn’t fully convinced that the app is as healthy as it seems. Junior Nuraiya Malik agreed, feeling BeReal has slowly become like every other app where people “only show the parts of their lives that they want to be seen,” suggesting that perhaps people are not incentivized to be as real as the app makes it out to be.
This perception that the basic concept of BeReal is praised more so than the app itself is widely affirmed. In their article published in WIRED, Brooke Erin Duffy and Ysabel Gerrard discuss that while some people “agreed that the app provided a welcome reprieve from its more curatorial competitors, others reject the idea that BeReal furnished anything new, especially with participants’ calculated self-presentation tactics.” For instance, Malik admitted that she herself has frequently “waited ’till [she] was doing something fun” before she posted on the app. This shows that the time indicators on the app still does not encourage users to show the mundane and authentic parts of their lives.
This “fake” element of the app is one of the main reasons that Moss stopped using it entirely. She initially downloaded BeReal because all of her close friends were using it. She stated that “at first it was nice because [she] had a small group of friends on the app,” but she “started getting requests from people that [she] wasn’t even close with,” making her feel that the app was becoming “less real” and was instead succumbing to the “highlight reel-y” feel of all other social media apps. To her, it seemed as if people “would just try to look real, when they weren’t actually depicting their day-to-day lives, creating the impression that every day in their life was really cool.” Charlotte expanded on this, asserting that this narrative is “actually quite unhealthy.” She remembers several instances where her friends would feel sad about their own lives because their days did not seem as glamorous as others. “It’s almost worse [than some of the other social media apps], because it can be unhealthy to believe that people are being real and living such cool lives when, in reality, their lives are only constructed to be cool,” she says.
The final verdict
Ultimately, the BeReal app is great in theory but fundamentally flawed in practice. Social media apps, in general, seem to be inextricably associated with the idea of a highlight reel; even when an app pushes you to be real, it remains hard to actually commit to this. People are inclined to share only what Sam Allock refers to as the “best bits” of their life, and shy away from the “boring” areas of their private lives.
With all of this in mind, here is an important reminder: No matter what social media platform you’re using, what you see should be taken with a grain of salt. People’s social media presence is carefully curated. Users share only what they deem “post-worthy.” It’s only the best parts of people’s day or month that are seen on these apps and BeReal is no exception. This is why Forbes writer Carrie Kerpen urges social media users to “stop comparing your behind-the-scenes with everyone’s highlight reel.”
So, proceed with caution.
BeReal’s daily notification; photo credit, Nuraiya Malik