Gen Z’ers might be moving away from the authentic app, but the number of daily users is still high
After hours of seeing pictures from exciting holidays, fun nights out, gorgeous food and perfect bodies, sometimes we need a break to see what the real world is actually like. This is why BeReal is the perfect app for a realisation that what people post on social media is not always real.
The platform launched back in 2020, and was then awarded the best iPhone app of the year in 2022, having as many as 20 million daily users in October. The app is simple: all users get notified at the same time to post a photo of what they are doing, with both their front and back camera, within a two-minute time span. This latest form of social media is a response to the endless fake portrayals online, and is supposed to encourage us to show our real selves, not just the moments we consider to be “Instagram worthy”.
“BeReal feels like a return to a time when posting on social media felt less like a performance and more like a way I actually enjoyed spending my time” Katie Way writes for Vice.
When Instagram was launched back in 2010, we would all post pictures of anything and everything, from our coffee to a picture of the sky. We were documenting every moment of our lives with the exaggerated colours from the filters back then. But over the years, as social media, and Instagram specifically has grown immensely, times have changed and the way we post has too. Pictures are now carefully curated, we use apps to plan our feed and we don’t post the boring aspects of our lives.
In 2016 Instagram introduced the feature “Instagram Stories”, inspired by Snapchat, which was supposed to encourage users to post other things than just the highlights of their lives, as the post would disappear after 24 hours. But now we even wait to post our stories, where the whole point of the feature was to post there and then, unplanned and unedited. Like Katie says, BeReal gives us the nostalgia of the old social media times, where what you post and the likes you get don’t matter – it’s all about seeing what your friends are doing.
22-year-old Westminster student Aurora Try has been using BeReal almost daily since early 2022. Aurora likes the app because she gets to be a part of her friends’ day to day without always having a full-on conversation with them during her busy student life. “Whereas Instagram is usually used to share edited photos of the ‘interesting’ and ‘major’ moments in life, BeReal allows me to get a glimpse into what my friends are up to on a normal day” she says. “It’s a nice way to keep up with acquaintances, because it’s more lowkey and personal than Instagram.”
Imperial student Håvard Wivestad agrees. “I like that you gain insight into the everyday life of people that isn’t as polarised as on Instagram, and especially with people you might not talk to much on other platforms anymore”.
Aurora also mentions that she likes how the app only allows users to see their friends’ post for that one day, as one of the app’s main features is that all previous posts disappear when there is a new notification. “You don’t have to worry about people going back to look at the pictures you posted a while back which makes it more in the moment and not so planned,” she explains. This is a good feature by the app in more than one way. As Aurora says, you don’t have to stress about people stalking your previous awkward photos, but it’s also nice for the users themselves to keep as memories as the app keeps all your past posts in a private archive called “your memories”. It’s like a personal photo album where you can see what you were up to on that day. “It is a nice thing to look back on and have a memory of every day,” Westminster student Eli Rhine says.
The fact that all previous posts are gone once there is a new notification is also great because this means there is a limit to the amount of scrolling you can do on the app. “[on TikTok] you have unlimited videos, whereas on BeReal you have to wait for others to post,” Håvard explains. Instagram, TikTok and Facebook all offer infinite scroll, BeReal doesn’t, and the length of the feed will depend on how many friends you have and whether they post or not. 23-year-old life coach Oliver Cameron, who is a self-named diehard BeReal’er, is a fan of this feature. “When you reach the bottom, you’re done. And that kind of reminds you to put your phone down,” he says.
Although BeReal doesn’t give us the option to keep on scrolling and scrolling, the app still encourages us to open and use it. For some, that simple activity will lead to them moving onto other apps and scroll through those, when they are through their BeReal feed, as they are now already on their phones. “It kind of encourages you to be by your phone all the time” Eli says. “Whenever I consider switching my phone off or putting it somewhere out of sight because I need to concentrate, I don’t do it because of BeReal” she continues. “It’s kind of a step backwards from trying to spend less time on my phone since I got BeReal”. The app sends multiple notifications throughout the day every time one of your friends post their BeReal, encouraging us to enter the app and see what they have posted. So, although we can argue that the dopamine effect of the app is different than other social media app’s who offer infinite scroll, it is still there. However, the simple fact that the app itself doesn’t offer infinite scrolling, it is less likely to encourage that behaviour than other apps, which is a step in the right direction.
The point of BeReal is for us to be more authentic, to post in the moment. No filters, no editing, no planning. The app allows its users to post after the 2-minute window, but it will let your friends know how late you were to post and can also show how many retakes you did. Obviously, people will be tempted to save their BeReal for a moment that suits them better and looks more exciting than sitting in front of their computer doing coursework. Users might know that they are doing something cool and social later and would rather save their post for that moment, but this will of course vary from feed to feed based on how your friends use the app. The moments you scroll through can be very real, boring or weird, or you will see that one friend who posted “seven hours late” from a concert crowd. “Even though it can be tempting to save my BeReal, I usually always post when I see the notification,” says Håvard.
“I struggle to believe that BeReal can compete with Instagram and TikTok, and it will take a while for the app to become very mainstream”
Håvard Wivestad, Imperial student
Oliver is pretty happy about the realness of his feed. “My friends will post when it [the notification] happens, like even if they’re on the toilet. They won’t try and make themselves look good, which makes me feel better,” he says. “We’re not all trying to be something we’re clearly not,” he continues, revealing that he has on a few occasions saved his BeReal – but only when he knew that it would be an exceptionally cool moment to document.
Like Oliver says, seeing your friends “being real” and not portraying themselves as good as possible is refreshing in this social media addicted world we are living in. Sitting at home on a Friday night scrolling through Instagram, seeing endless stories of people clubbing, eating at restaurants or chilling at the pub can both give you FOMO (fear of missing out) and make you think that your life is extremely boring compared to everyone else’s. FOMO is a very familiar term today and is something many young people experience especially because of their constant use of social media. The term is explained as a feeling of anxiety that you are missing out on things your friends or peers are doing, related to the fear of being excluded. A common symptom of FOMO is feeling bad about your own life when comparing it to others on social media. BeReal is here to give us the opposite feeling, showing the real sides of people’s lives and that it is not always as exciting and perfect as we think. Posting your BeReal from the comfort of your own couch watching TV on a weekend, and seeing other BeReal friends do the same, can be a relief. It shows that not everyone is out being social.
The app’s attempt to cure social media users’ FOMO, can unfortunately for some also have the opposite affect – just adding to it. Because of the possibility to post “late” and based on how your friends use the app, what you see might in fact not always be as real as you’d think it was. “I don’t like it when people only post when they’re doing something fun, because it makes me feel stupid for always posting when it [the notification] goes off, usually while I’m studying” Eli says. She always posts when she sees the notification, despite the trend of saving the post for later. “Seeing my friends post when they’re doing something fun just adds to my unnecessary FOMO” she continues. As social media in general is a big cause of FOMO, if you’re struggling with FOMO from BeReal, taking a break from all social media might be the solution to realise the cause of your FOMO and how no social media is real life.
Heine Berntsen, student at Hult Business School, tells me that what he likes about BeReal is “how everything is so simple, and the one main goal is that it is supposed to be real”. Norway-based student Aron Daly also tells me that he likes the clean design of the app. However, founder and CEO of the influencer marketing agency, Billion Dollar Boys, Ed East, tells Digiday, that “a greater variety of formats and features would help keep the platform feeling fresh, and increase engagement and user retention”. BeReal has attempted this by recently launching some new features. Now, users who post within the two-minute time limit are awarded with two “bonus BeReals” that they can post whenever they like before the next notification. This is added to encourage more users, mainly the ones who save their posts for later, to BeReal in the moment the notification goes off. In addition to this, the app has partnered up with Spotify so users can now share what song they are listening to while posting their BeReal. Aurora, who is loyal with her posting, sees both positives and negatives of these new features. “I think it is a cool add-on because it gives people a benefit if they post on time,” she says. “However, it kind of takes away the concept of the app. I would rather see them make a limit for positing within one hour.”
The new features seem to be the app’s attempt to get the users who left the app out of boredom back by updating it and giving them more opportunities to post what they want to post. The app went from having 20 million daily users in October 2022, to almost half of that in February this year. What’s more, the app’s monthly downloads decreased from 12 million in September to 3.3 million in January. Glossy also reported that even though the app is still relevant, it is declining quickly amongst Gen Z and that they have started to ditch the app because it feels pointless. Despite these facts, the number of 10 million daily users is still very high and shows that the app has not reached a complete end yet. The new features might even bring the ditchers back.
Sasha Kaletsky, co-founder of Creator Ventures, also shared the statistics on BeReal’s downloads and daily users on Twitter in February saying “DAUs (daily active users) are holding up well, only downloads decreasing”. This means a lot of people are still sticking to the app and posting as regularly as they did when they first downloaded it, enjoying the simplicity and authenticity of the app. “I think it will become popular again in the summer when people go on vacations and so on,” says Aron.
BeReal probably won’t be the social media app that takes over Instagram and TikTok, but it is a nice break from all the “instagrammable” moments we see and post all the time. We all need a bit more authenticity in our online lives, even if it is in the form of another social media app. “I struggle to believe that BeReal can compete with Instagram and TikTok, and it will take a while for the app to become very mainstream,” Håvard says. “But the app has the possibility to expand to other countries, as it is mainly available in western countries.”
Oliver believes that BeReal will see the light again after the rumoured downfall and that this winter period has just been a temporary dry-spell for the app. “I think it will come way back in fashion and become cool again,” he says, “The Tamagotchi became cool again after not being around for years,” he adds. He believes things go in cycles, and that the app will organically grow again. “When Instagram starts becoming an overlord, we will all be like ‘remember BeReal?’”
Featured image by Prateek Katyal via Unsplash CC.