Jamie’s phone buzzed; he looked down and noticed it was from BeReal, a new app that gives you a two-minute window to take a front facing and back facing picture. Jamie turned the camera to take a picture of himself and his friends, and then posted.
BeReal currently has over 10 million active users. It revolves around the idea of taking an unedited picture at a random time each day. BeReal was created in 2020 by Alexis Barreyat, a former GoPro employee, and was designed to be the opposite of Instagram. Barreyat didn’t like all the glamor and photoshopped pictures everyone shared on Instagram, so he developed an app that has users share an unpolished image of their lives from an ever-changing two-minute window each day.
BeReal user Josh Lindauer said the app is “addictive,” much like other popular social media apps Snapchat and Instagram. Lindauer and fellow sophomore Brayden Doyle agreed the retake feature goes against the whole point of “being real.” Junior Katharine Lacy, disagreed by saying that she “loves the retake feature” and likes to, “take advantage,” of it. For many people, the importance of posting your first picture and not retaking is more important than posting your picture on time. This can be controversial as one of the main draws of the app is that everyone posts their BeReal at the same time, and posting late defeats that purpose.
BeReal is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most used social media platforms. It is currently the number one ranking social media app in many different continents and countries like the U.S. and the United Kingdom. While many other social media platforms promote edited pictures, BeReal promotes unedited pictures. Instagram’s highly edited photos can cause a depleting self-image that could cause depression.
BeReal wants to focus on someone’s true image and personality. They don’t like the deception that many other social media platforms create, but nevertheless, fake news and images are what make these other apps grow. but will it be able to stand with the giants like Instagram and Tiktok or will it lose traction?
