Social media may be thought of as a battle, one that you must manage based on the pressure that the various platforms place upon you. You don’t need to be well-known to manage the expectations that social media exacts on you. The majority of this generation will go to any lengths to only publish the most perfect aspects of their lives. They want to build a vision, a fake reality, in which they modify images and videos to present a particular viewpoint. Precisely because of this we can safely assume that humans aren’t real, but guess what? Someone decided to make that exact assumption. The social media platform BeReal, where you may be who you really are.

What does BeReal do?

With the aim of encouraging users to be more honest by removing excessively filtered photographs and asking them to express themselves as they are in that time, the social media app BeReal urges users to share unfiltered photos of themselves once every day.

How does it work?

Users receive a notification at a random time once a day saying ‘Time to BeReal.’ This opens up a two-minute window for users to post a picture of what they are currently doing.

More on the concept

According to their respective time zones, all users receive the notification at the same moment; therefore in theory it is catching people in real time. BeReal’s popularity soared as a result of its emphasis on authenticity. Unfiltered, unprocessed photos with an asterisk next to them indicate that they were taken again. The phone’s front camera automatically catches whatever is in the frame at that moment after taking a picture with the rear camera. When done correctly, you get two images: the user’s current activity and a smaller inset selfie of the BeReal user. The front and back camera angles of the smartphone are combined in this intriguing way.

A User’s Experience

BeReal is straightforward, not simply in terms of design but also in terms of ease of use. Instead of playing with only filters and ideal editing tools, you only press a button to finish the day’s work. The memories you preserve are actually how this app’s “hype” is communicated. It functions as a growth platform in a sense by teaching you to appreciate every single moment of the day, even those that might not be worth documenting with a photo.

This app deserves praise for being the first to make users realize what we all thought but never put into practice—that you should be free to be who you really are, without any restraints. It takes on social media in an unseen and beautiful way, through a real lens and as mentioned values authenticity. You get to share moments that are perfect, because they were real.