The Rise and Fall of BeReal
Via. Stuff.co.nz
It’s August of 2022. Ask any teenager what the app of the year is, and they’d reply with BeReal. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, the app took the world by storm, peaking at a whopping 73.5 million users in August of 2022. BeReal was flourishing. It seemed like the only way left for BeReal was up.
BeReal was launched in 2020 by entrepreneurs Alexis Barreyat and Kévin Perreau. At a random time once a day, the app would send a notification to the user to “BeReal.” Within the given time frame, the user would snap and post a photo of them “in the moment.” The app promised a unique experience for the users, as well as authenticity.
BeReal’s authentic take was considered extremely fresh, considering the state of most social media apps at the time. A report published by Net Studies, explains that identity “takes on a completely different meaning online”. The report goes on to describe social media as a “black hole” of forgery, commending the scarce users that “stay partially true to their real self.” Social media profiles are highly curated and customized to portray a shiny faux version of oneself.
This inauthenticity is not simply a blemish, but a serious issue that leads to detrimental effects. According to Help Guide, a mental health organization, social media use “increases FOMO and feelings of inadequacy, dissatisfaction, and isolation.” FOMO, a recently coined term, is an abbreviation for ‘fear of missing out,’ defined by Cambridge Dictionary as “a worried feeling that you may miss exciting events that other people are going to, especially caused by things you see on social media.” FOMO and other negative feelings arise as a reaction to social media posts that are oftentimes far more alluring than the real moments they portray. This misconception that everything on social media is real causes negative feelings such as“increased risks of depression” (Zipdo) and other mental illnesses.
Considering this toxic and unchanging environment of social media, BeReal was a window of salvation with its idea of authenticity resonating with netizens, rushing to start their “BeRealing” journey.
BeReal had lots of positive reviews. Imowen, a 14-year-old BeReal user, praised the app for being “basically a non-glamourous Instagram where there aren’t any filters and no way to touch up what you’re doing,” Another 16-year-old user commends the app as well, saying that they “like how real it is and sometimes even funny.” Aside from these reviews, a plethora of users expressed their initial satisfaction with the app and its authenticity.
However, by the end of the summer of 2022, the app experienced a sudden sharp drop in users– a shocking 61% in the matter of seven months (Apptopia). What possibly could have caused their sharp loss?
There are several reasons for BeReal’s downfall, but the most prominent one is the deviation from the app’s mission. Why was BeReal founded? For authenticity. The mission was working at first– the users were posting on time, displaying their somewhat mundane but real lifestyles. But as time went on, users began to wait to post their BeReals as they knew they’d be at that cool event in an hour or with their friends in thirty minutes. These overly fabricated moments on the app started to pressure the truly authentic users to similarly stage their posts to seem “cool.” BeReal’s mission statement wasn’t really in action anymore.
In addition to that, the current state of the social media market makes it very difficult for new apps to easily gain success. First, the teenage demographic for which these apps are mainly targeted have plummeting attention spans. Teenagers actively seek dopamine hits, and social media apps promise dopamine through their perpetual algorithm that facilitates mindless scrolling. However, BeReal does not offer this eternal feature, only enabling posts once a day, drastically decreasing potential screen time every day. Second, any social media app is doomed to fail. Social media giants such as Instagram and Facebook are only successful due to their well-populated platforms that utilize existing online friends as a deterrence of deletion. However, BeReal, as a rising app, did not have this preexisting user base, or a variety of ways to interact with others to hinder users from deleting the app. Thus, 61% of users deleted it.
It seems like the social media market has no cookie-cutter way to change. At this point, what’s the point?
BeReal was a momentous and innovative change to the social media market. Although short-lived, it changed the user’s mind to think of social media in a different way. Perhaps this fleeting trend has contributed to working towards a more authentic online.