To BeReal or Not to BeReal

You are in class, and that familiar “ding” goes off. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, you look up, look around, and look at your phone. It is time to BeReal. You can see a classmate or two try to sneak a photo in, others anxiously look at the clock and decide to wait until after the class ends. It feels like an episode of “Black Mirror” but instead of being on the TV screen, it is happening in real life; the phenomenon that you are experiencing is the newly popular app BeReal. 

BeReal is a social media app first released in 2020, which recently gained widespread popularity over the past few months. BeReal users are simultaneously notified at random once a day to share a photo of what they are doing within two minutes. The app will take a photo using both the front and rear cameras, displaying both the user’s face and what they are doing at that moment. This post is shown to their friends, who can comment or take little photos — called “RealMojis” — to react to someone’s BeReal.  

The app markets itself as promoting authenticity in social media. If a user misses the two-minute window, that app notifies the user’s friends that they took a late BeReal. Additionally, until the user posts, they are not able to see their friend’s BeReals. Users have the opportunity to retake their BeReal, but the number of retakes is visible on the post.  Other data, such as location, is also shared with a user’s friends.  

I first got the BeReal app in early February. One of my housemates had been using it for about two weeks at that point. It was not until one of my hometown friends got BeReal that I decided to take the leap and download it. I was instantly hooked.  

Despite only needing to be on the app for the two-minute window, BeReal was always in my thoughts. I prided myself as someone who was not inseparable from my phone, but after downloading BeReal, I found myself making sure to bring my phone with me everywhere I went, even if it was just to the next room. I could not escape the thought of “what if BeReal happens?” I even found myself consistently keeping my notifications on, something that I had never done before.   

In my early days of being real, I only had five or so friends. In the late spring, that number doubled. I started telling more and more people about it, many of whom downloaded the app. Over the summer, BeReal seemed to explode. Now, I have 37 friends. For an app that promotes intimacy and authenticity, this seems like a lot. My friends vary from old coworkers, friends from high school, family members, and people I have gone on trips with. I am no longer reacting with a RealMoji to every post, nor do I click on the notification every time I see one of my friends post a late BeReal.   

Currently, BeReal has over 10 million active daily users, and 21.6 million active monthly users. Earlier this month, there was even an SNL skit about BeReal. The app has come a long way since I started using it in February 2022. Once the app started to get more users, there seemed to be a new glitch almost every day: notifications would not be sent or posts would not upload. Currently, BeReal only makes money through investments. There are no advertisements on BeReal, which makes it hard to monetize. The glitches have become minimal, but it is still an imperfect app.  

Now, if you are in a public space when the notification goes off, you are bound to hear murmurs about the app and see someone taking a quick photo. When I am around my friends, my BeReals tend to involve them looking down at their phones — although they look like “screenagers,” they are just trying to post on time, same as me.    

Despite being an app that promotes authenticity, BeReal often falls short of this goal. Do not get me wrong — I think it is more successful at achieving authenticity than other social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok — but the idea that BeReal is always truthful is part of the problem. Even if a user does post in time, the two-minute window offers enough of a buffer to get out of bed, put your hair down, or change the browser tab that is open. When the BeReal notification goes off in your Tuesday/Thursday afternoon class for the fifth time in a row, it is easy to post later when you are doing something more exciting. No one will be wiser. Unless, of course, someone posts 26 hours late when they are at a Harry Styles concert.  

The idea of “authenticity” becomes redefined through BeReal. Being authentic — or “being real” — involves the mundane parts of life. When you choose to document the mundane, it goes through the perspective of your phone, which is its own sort of filter. It may be impossible, for now, to ever truly “be real.”