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BeReal Gabriel Wee Tom BeReal. What does it mean to be real, and how can we ask our adolescents to be real when we’re rarely ever real ourselves? The keyword “BeReal” functions as a word with a double-meaning. BeReal is a social-media photo-sharing app, but the term is also a rallying cry for people (and especially youth) to be more “authentic” and show their “true selves”. This keyword can be analyzed through a variety of lens that relate to adolescents and their health. This includes the use of the app itself, the extremely new and understudied effects that social media has on teen mental health, the social pressure to post and broadcast one’s life via social media, and exploring what it means to “be real” as a youth still forming their identity. BeReal is a social media app that sends all of its users a prompt to take two simultaneous photos (one rear camera, one front camera) of whatever they’re doing once a day, at a different time each day. This prompt lasts for just two minutes, allowing users to show their true, authentic selves by not giving them time to prepare, curate, or filter their posts. As with most social media apps, this photo is then sent to your followers’ accounts, in the same way that it is delivered on Snapchat. BeReal was first created in 2020, but gained major popularity in 2022, and it is especially popular with teenagers/adolescents. Unlike Instagram, which can be considered someone’s highly edited and posed “highlight reel”, BeReal aims to show the mundane, average, “regular” parts of people’s lives. Another way that this term relates to our youth is that we really don’t know about the effects that social media has on the brain, at least not yet. Yes, there are a number of preliminary studies that suggest social media can be damaging to the adolescent brain, but we don’t know how much. How does this app and others like it affect mental health? Addiction? Self-esteem and our sense of belonging? The bottom line is that there isn’t much in history that we can draw upon to answer this question, and the pressure to be fake for validation as opposed to “being real” is a serious concern. One more reason that BeReal is a relevant term to the study of adolescence is the fact that we as adults often pressure teens to “be real” without necessarily being real ourselves. It seems a bit ridiculous to preach that being real is what, evolving, ever-changing teens should be. Instead, it may be useful to instead encourage them to find out who they are and experiment, that way they can eventually discover what it means to be true to themselves. During a time when growth, insecurity, experimentation, and uncertainty plague the teenage brain, pressuring our youth be anything, including “being real” is not a fair proposal. Maybe instead of telling our kids what to do and to “be real”, we can instead opt to just let them be. Academic source (from York Omni): Hutchinson, A. (2022). BeReal Rises to 10 Million Daily Active Users. Social Media Today, https://ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/tradejournals/bereal-rises-10-million-daily-active-users/docview/2708679360/se-2 Other source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6RyIGLJXAM
