On August 6, 2022, I joined BeReal. After hearing about the app for months on end, my best friend finally convinced me to create an account. Hearing from her and others about the relaxed nature of the app, I thought I would see for myself what all the fuss was about. What I found was much different than I imagined. 

As a generation growing up surrounded by technology, the information we consume on the internet takes up a lot of brain space. Addicting apps like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat all cater to the Gen Z demographic, capturing our interest with selfies, filters, and likes. With every new app, game, or interface we gain, an obsession is born; and those obsessions spread. 

In recent months, Gen Z has found a new app to obsess over: BeReal. This app isn’t like the other forms of social media we are used to. The goal of BeReal is quite literally what its name implies: to be real. Once you join the app, you get a daily notification that it is time to “be real.” At that point, you open the app and take two pictures: one from your front camera, and the other from the back. Although the app is designed to maximize simplicity, that isn’t necessarily the case. 

One of the biggest aspects of any social media platform is sharing. You share your BeReals with your “friends” on the app—friends just being another loosely cloaked term for followers. While some may argue that BeReal is just for the close and personal people in one’s life, anyone that follows what a certain person is doing at a point in the day is still a follower. BeReal’s attempt to be different and even better than all the other social media platforms is, quite frankly, stupid. 

One issue is that you don’t have to do the BeReal when the notification goes off. Since there is one per day, you can save your BeReal for when you are doing something interesting, so that your “friends” see cooler photos. This basically defeats the entire purpose of the app, which is not surprising. Doesn’t an app get boring if it’s just pictures of your friends doing homework and sitting in bed? BeReal is almost set up to fail.

This idea that social media is going to become realistic is never going to work. Let’s be real, the whole point of social media is that it’s not real—and some people like that. As high school students, we prefer that our peers see the shiny, fake versions of ourselves that appear through our phone screens. BeReal isn’t going to be the exception. •