New App BeReal Offers a Break from Instagram's Curated Perfection

It’s no secret that the highly curated world inside Instagram has been weighing on people mentally and emotionally. (As just one example, internal Facebook research released in September 2021 found that 32 percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse, reported the Wall Street Journal, according to CNBC.) Yet, even though many people are well-versed in the downsides of social media, connecting with friends and keeping tabs on one another’s lives is a perk of the platforms that many of us aren’t ready to give up.

That’s where the photo-sharing app BeReal comes in. First launched in 2020 by French entrepreneur Alexis Barreyat, it pegs itself as ” the first uncontrollable social media” and aims, first and foremost, to create an authentic environment. Though it’s not exactly brand new, BeReal is starting to gain steam, particularly among college students, according to Bloomberg. It’s been downloaded over one million times from the Google Play store and is currently No. 8 in the social networking category on the Apple App Store, with almost 15 thousand reviews singing its praises.

But will BeReal be enough to change the way we share and consume online? And how do you use BeReal in the first place? Here’s what you need to know.

What Is the BeReal App?

BeReal (currently available for iPhone and Android) sends you a push notification saying “Time to BeReal” at a new time each day. You have two minutes to take a photo and upload it for your friends to see – no filters, no editing, no time to create the perfect shot. The idea? The show a glimpse into your actual everyday life, not your highlight reel.

The app feels like the early days of Instagram or Snapchat, but with a deadline element, and there’s something touching about knowing that everyone with the app is stopping to take a photo at the same time. It’s refreshing to see blurry photos, dirty dishes, and awkward selfies.

“THIS APP BREAKS BARRIERS!” writes user AndresitoFelix in a review on the Apple App Store. “You start realising that these posts from other users and friends including your own are very different from what is usually [seen] on other social media apps. You can’t post something planned it’s random and it’s real. It gives you a real glimpse [into people’s] lives. Definitely worth giving it a shot.”

How Does BeReal Work?

When BeReal sends you the notification, you have two minutes from the moment you open the app to take your photo and upload it (either publicly, or just for friends to see).

At the same time you take a photo, BeReal automatically takes a photo with the front-facing camera, which appears as a smaller selfie inside your main photo. (You can also swap them so that your selfie is the main image.) It’s admittedly difficult to take a decent photo from both your front-facing and regular camera at the same time, but that’s presumably part of the unfiltered energy; even if BeReal catches you at a good time of day, it could still turn out crappy anyway. But either way, you’re being forced to share both yourself and your surroundings in the moment. And you can’t see other people’s daily bit of content until you’ve posted your own, forcing you to not just lurk on the platform, but also engage. Like what a friend is doing? You can also reply to people’s posts with “RealMojis,” which are variations of selfies you’ve posted with the app.

There’s a “Discovery” page, so you can see what other people are doing in addition to the friends you’ve connected with, though it feels a bit odd to be peeking into strangers’ very everyday lives. It lacks the aesthetic, inspirational feel that Instagram has – which is, of course, the point – but it also makes following people you don’t know feel a bit creepier than on other social platforms.

How Often Can You Post on BeReal?

You get just one opportunity per day to share something on BeReal, and that notification prompting you for a photo happens at a different time each day. Although the idea of BeReal is to be forced to post in the moment – no matter what sort of mundane life activity you’re doing – you actually do have the opportunity to post a late BeReal if you miss the initial ping (it will just be labelled with “four hours late,” for example, so people know you didn’t take it immediately). But as Twitter users have pointed out, the ability to “save” your daily BeReal post for a moment when you’re, say, actually showered and doing something interesting, defeats the purpose of the app and its mission.

What Does the Future of BeReal Look Like?

It’s tough to know whether BeReal will take over in the way that Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat did, or whether it will surge and burn like Vine. The sentiment is a heartening one: a social media where we’re validated by the normalcy of other people’s lives. But so many platforms start out that way, with humble beginnings and a simple mission, and then the pressure to monetise and measure up eventually warps the vibe.

If it takes off, how long will BeReal stay, well, real?