Everyone, it’s time to BeReal.
The BeReal just went off, but barely anyone posts anymore compared to hours of scrolling through people’s posts and multiple RealMojis, but now BeReal is a ghost town.
BeReal was first released in 2020 by GoPro employees Alexis Barreyat and Kevin Perreau in France. The app first hit popularity during the summer of 2022. It hit number one in the app store on July 25 of that year and remained until September 14. The app has a notification that goes off at different times of the day around the nation, which unlocks a camera function that encourages users to take a photo within two minutes using the front and back camera, and classifies photos as “late” if not posted in the two-minute window. The app’s mission statement is to show “Your Friends for Real.”
BeReal has been declining in the number of users compared to its early days. Like many of my peers that used the app daily when it came out, I have deleted BeReal because it does not hold up to the expectations it presents. I know kids my age who don’t post until they’re doing something fun, which entirely defeats the purpose of the app BeReal is supposed to be a glimpse into a real, raw moment, not a curated picture.
The app was great in the first couple of months, but as the summer adventures have faded away, there isn’t much excitement to see what people are doing anymore.
BeReal definitely has its flaws, making the app unenjoyable. In some cases, the notification goes off when the day is practically over or freezes when one is trying to take a photo. These imperfections happen to many social media apps like Snapchat and Instagram, but since it has such high traffic it would be pleasing if the app could fix these flaws because it’s been out for almost three years.
Sophomore Oscar Sanchez seconds that he used to use the app but now he doesn’t due to how much it has reduced his expectations.
“I only use it when I’m with friends because I just forgot about it and didn’t care as much as other people do,” Sanchez said. “ I only use it to keep the memory.”
Sanchez notices a similar pattern between BeReal and other social media apps.
“It’s a trend that has its peak at the beginning [when first released]. You rarely see apps like TikTok and Instagram [that remain popular for a long],” Sanchez said. “It was a natural trend when it was famous, and now it is not.”
It was expected that BeReal might’ve fallen from popularity, but now it seems to be dragged out and has fallen quickly. For example, one of the best appeals of the app was the unique feature of the camera taking a picture from the front and back, which has since been acquired by other apps, reducing the attraction to the app.
People who still use the app today notice the defects of the app making it an undesirable experience BeReal user and sophomore Rylee Templar loves the app and has been using it since April 2022, but she senses the decline.
“It has [declined] because at the very beginning [people] would go and react to [others,]” Templar said. “People still use [it]. It’s just not as popular because a lot of people know about it.”
Overall BeReal seems like it will continue to reduce and with the users, there may be still some followers but the trend of it will come to an end.
