You are walking through the halls, and your phone buzzes. It’s BeReal time. Everyone freezes in their tracks and begins to get real with their audience. 

BeReal is a social media app designed to show life without filters. It was released in 2020 and has nearly 21.6 million daily active users. 

A BeReal notification alerts users at a random time daily. Within two minutes of the notification, users are to take a picture of what they are doing and show their life at that exact time. As the user captures the moment, it takes a photo with the front and rear of the camera. If the user feels caught off guard or unprepared, BeReal allows them to retake the photo as many times as they want. After the two minutes is over, the user can still post a photo, but followers will see that they posted late, how late they were and how many times they retook the photo. Photos also disappear from BeReal after 24 hours.

“Sometimes I’m not real. [You should] only [post a BeReal] when you’re doing something fun, so sometimes if you get the notification and you’re just sitting in your bed, you’re like ‘Ah, dang it, now I don’t have a good BeReal,’” junior Karley Josef said.

BeReal’s premise is to showcase life unfiltered, whether the user is at the biggest amusement park or sitting in your room. Junior Emma Nunnelee believes it is unreal when people retake their picture or does not take their BeReal on time.

“Then all your peers are conversing how you’re ‘fake,’ but since there’s two minutes you can post and it’s randomly [sent out] throughout the day, people wait until they’re doing something exciting with friends or something interesting in general. They’ll post [then] instead of when it just comes out so that they seem cooler,” Nunnelee said. 

On apps like TikTok and Snapchat, people use filters with “gentle face” filters, taking away scars to make their skin appear flawless. 

“When people on social media use filters it gives off this allusion that they’re absolutely perfect even though [nobody’s perfect]. Seeing these ‘perfect people’ with ‘perfect faces and lives’ makes others feel less of themselves when comparing their lives to people on social media,” sophomore Lily West said. 

Whether you like BeReal or not, the concept of the app is to embrace truth. 

“BeReal defines true self-love and builds openness you never thought you could discover with an app,” Josef said.