Introducing Marriotts Ridge’s latest obsession, BeReal! BeReal is a social media app that goes off every day at a different time, signaling its users to capture a photo and share it with the world. The app takes a photo on both the front and back camera to show users’ unfiltered lives.
According to OnlineOptimism, the app was released in late 2019 but started to get popular in July 2022 when there were around 20 million downloads.
As summer started, BeReal began appealing to students because of how the app encouraged students to capture the moment. Sophomore Jeremey Jacob explains his interest in the app and why he originally downloaded it.
“In my opinion, the appeal of the app is the feature that allows one to take a picture with both front and back almost simultaneously. If I ever meet Taylor Swift, I could take a picture of her and my reaction,” Jacob explained.
Jacob downloaded BeReal over summer after hearing about it from friends.
“We were fascinated by the idea and decided it was time to give it a shot ourselves. I downloaded the app and took a picture with my friends, that would be one of our last photos before they inevitably moved to college,” Jacob said.
Another student, senior Adam Pouliot, enjoys how the app will ‘ding’ every day at random moments, which means that the app can capture people doing anything.
“I think the primary appeal of the app is that the prompt for taking pictures for your BeReal shows up randomly once every 24 hours. This feature means the app will ‘print you’ [show what you’re doing] – from each vacation to just sitting at work, I’ve seen a wide range of activities on my friend’s BeReals,” Pouliot said.
Senior Julia Kumor says the exciting part of the app is that it captures a “moment in time”. After you take your picture, you post it without any editing.
“The appeal of the app is the fact it’s the ‘reality’ instead of the normal social media where people can edit what they post,” Kumor said.
With the sudden popularity of the app, many wonder if this trendy app will ever ‘die-down.’
Junior Nadia Klementsen thinks BeReal has started to decrease in popularity, and has also become a repetitive process.
“I feel like a lot of my friends have already deleted the app, it’s the same thing over and over again and it gets kind of boring,” Klementsen said
Pouliot explains to him BeReal is slowly losing its popularity and that it peaked around summer when a majority of students used it.
“I say it has already kind of died down because there aren’t nearly as many people posting pictures from their BeReal on other social medias like Snapchat and Instagram, compared to the end of the summer right before school started.” Pouliot said.
While Mustangs are drawn to the app’s goal of making social media more realistic, only time will tell whether the app will maintain its popularity.