BeReal, Gabriel Wee Tom………………………………………………………………………22 BeReal, Annalyssa Schreck

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

BeReal

Annalyssa Schreck

BeReal. Who is real and who isn’t? Are you for real? Be ready to capture whatever you’re doing in five minutes or else your friends will be notified you posted late! This is “Not another social media network”... oh the irony. BeReal is targeting youth with their slogan that they are an outlier from other social media networks, and that you will build a more realistic repertoire of yourself in the eye of social media. This app preys on the fact that youth have the knowledge that social media platforms have toxic effects on the brain. Adolescent’s perception of the self can be skewed when they go on instagram and other photo sharing platforms and see heavily edited and modified highlight reels of other people, so BeReal came out as a way to show unedited photos captured at random times of the day to show a more realistic representation of your friends’ days. BeReal operates by having an array of friends much like every other social media app, and at random times of the day, you get a notification saying “it's time to BeReal! You have five minutes to post what you are doing”. You then take a front facing photo and a back camera facing photo as a way to show what you look like and what is in front of you/ what you are doing. The image then gets posted for all of your friends to see, where people can “react” to your image by replying with a photo of their faces showing an expression to represent how they feel about your photo. BeReal is extremely controversial with their slogan as it really is another social media network to suck adolescents in. Instagram, twitter, snapchat, tiktok, youtube and whatsapp are amongst some of the most popular apps and they do not require a time restraint of five minutes to complete something or else you get publicly shamed for doing so. BeReal will also notify friends how many times you retook a photo, in a way shaming individuals for retaking an image. BeReal is invading a lot of privacy with individuals by showing their surroundings and demanding that the photo is taken within a certain time frame. People have already found loopholes to use this app to support their “picture perfect” image online by waiting to take the photo at a time that they are doing something exciting to show that they aren’t “boring” for doing everyday normal activities like sleeping, doing homework, being in class, or simply relaxing on the couch. This is causing an encroachment on everyday life for adolescents, as they feel penalized for not taking their BeReal photo on time if they are not by their phones,