The following represents the opinion of the student reporter and does not represent the views of Loyola University Maryland, the Greyhound, or Loyola University’s Department of Communication.
You are sitting at your desk doing homework after a long day of classes. Suddenly, you hear your phone buzz and light up with a notification at the top: “Time to Be Real.” You click the notification and take a picture of what you are currently doing. It posts, and soon after, all your friends’ posts come up on your home page too. You scroll through your homepage to see what people are up to. Some are walking to class, some are in the dining hall, some are at the gym. You exit the app after checking up on your friends.
This scenario occurs every day, always at different times, if you are a user of the app BeReal. However, you do not have to stick to the two-minute time frame given as the notification goes off. You can post minutes or even hours late, up until you receive a BeReal notification the next day. Despite having this “posting late” feature, BeReal promotes itself as an authentic app that gives users a chance to post a real and unfiltered photo of a snapshot of their day. This is a trait that sets BeReal apart from other social media apps, because there is no expectation for people to look good or merely just show their followers the highlights of their lives. Lauren DeBernardis ‘24, a frequent user of the app, shared her opinion on BeReal’s credibility.
“I think for the most part it’s real; however, there are still a lot of people that purposely post late, not at the time the notification goes off,” DeBernardis said, “Personally, I try to do it on time.”
Other users will intentionally post hours after they receive the notification to show off the more exciting activities they may be doing that day. Sarah Vavricka ‘24 finds that many of the people on her feed have made a habit of this.
“People are definitely fake,” Vavricka said, “They make it so obvious too, because they post hours late and they’re always doing something fun.”
This seems to be a common trend with many users, especially on weekends. There have been multiple times on weekends where I have been scrolling through my BeReal feed to see my friends posting hours late in makeup and nice outfits, going out with friends. I have also been guilty of this as well, since I do not want my friends on BeReal to think that I am sitting in my room doing homework all the time. Habits like these have BeReal straying away from its original purpose of promoting authenticity and turning into yet another app that displays highlight reels of people’s lives.
Featured Image courtesy of Laura Somma.
