Let’s BeReal About Social Media

During my first week at GCC, I witnessed a strange event at lunch in Hicks Cafeteria. The room was resounding with introductions and happy greetings as students told stories of summer adventures and made new friends. However, the merry conversations were abruptly cut short when, at the same moment, the hundreds of students there excitedly grabbed their phones and began taking selfies. 

Frozen, students extended their arms and smiled into screens before flipping cameras and telling those around them to hold still. Although I was at first bewildered by the dramatic shift in the room’s atmosphere, I soon realized what had occurred: a BeReal notification.  

After attending a high school which prohibited the use of technology during the school day, I did not have much experience with the effects of BeReal until arriving at college. However, witnessing everyone around me stop what they were doing to take selfies in sync became a daily occurrence. While I have become somewhat used to BeReal’s consumption of ordinary moments, this abrupt and widespread seizure has never ceased to be strange and unnatural to me.

BeReal, the app that claims to be a positive alternative to other addictive, time-consuming, and unhealthy forms of social media, sends a notification to its users at a random time every day that they have two minutes to post pictures of themselves and their surroundings. The posts are “real” because all users receive the notification at the same time, and the filterless pictures are meant to show what everyone is really doing at that moment. 

Perhaps the most obvious problem with BeReal is that it requires its users to be around their phones constantly. The app is built upon the premise that its users must post their selfies within two minutes of the daily notification. This requirement is very dangerous for the cell phone addiction already consuming our society, and the app even goes so far as to shame those as “late” or “fake” who do not post quickly enough because they were able to enjoy more than two minutes away from their phones.

BeReal claims to be better than its competitors because it wastes less of its users’ time: the app only requires that users post once a day and does not beget scrolling through endless feeds. However, the way BeReal seizes time may be more dangerous and unnatural than any other app. BeReal may not use up as much time as Instagram or Snapchat, but it totally devours the time it does take, leaving no choice to the user. To download BeReal is to make a commitment to obey it, to do whatever BeReal tells you whenever BeReal commands it. Its users are, of course, free not to post at the prompting of the notification, but this would destroy BeReal’s central modus operandi of everyone posting at once. Refraining from posting would then negate the purpose of having the app. 

It is unnatural for humans to be so subjected to their phones and to notifications from an app that is meant to enhance their lives in some way. Other apps are also addictive and time-consuming, but at least their users may choose when or when not to use them.

Ironically, BeReal does not present a real depiction of its users when they post. When you see pictures on BeReal of people you know studying or spending time with friends, is that what they are really doing? No – it is what they were doing, before an urgent call to stop everything and pick up their phones ruined the moment. Now they are just taking pictures of themselves and scrolling through trivial selfies of others. 

BeReal’s consumption of time goes even further, controlling its users’ days until the time of the notification. Many admit to worrying about making sure they are doing something cool or looking good for the random moment when they will be required to make public whatever they are up to. The notification is the moment when users’ privacy is stolen, but their freedom to do what they will was seized far earlier by the anxiety the app commands – anxiety about what others will think of how they are spending their time.

The claim that BeReal avoids the aspects of social media that damage mental health – such as image-fixation and comparison – is a myth. It is utterly impossible to avoid comparing yourself to others on an app built around posting daily selfies for others to see. BeReal “reactions” are the new likes, and the app is no different from its counterparts in establishing FOMO and  self-esteem built on the approval of others. This necessarily leads to discontentment and an unhealthy obsession with the lives of others, both problematic hallmarks of all social media. 

Some argue that BeReal helps them keep up with friends, especially those not in the same physical location. However, BeReal used in this way disincentivizes efforts to truly keep in touch and creates an illusion that random snapshots can maintain a friendship. Social media equates knowing about people with truly knowing them. This is one of the greatest injuries to personal relationships that social media has inflicted on our society. While it may be fun to see little moments from your friends’ lives, it is meaningful, personal conversations that make a relationship “real.”