This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s fall editorial intern Lauren Sanchez. Find her on Instagram at @lauren.sanchezz. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.

Move aside Instagram and Snapchat, and say hello to BeReal! With over 10 million active users daily since its invention in 2020, the new social media app has taken over the social media game completely and Zillennials can’t get enough of it.

If you have not yet downloaded the app or haven’t heard of it, BeReal is a photo-sharing app that allows users to share a photo a day at a random time that the app picks. The user then captures what they are doing at the moment and can share the picture with their friends on a collective feed. With only a two-minute window to take and upload your photo, the time crunch forces users to post authentically and stay true to the intentions of the designs of the app.

In a promise from the app of “No filters, No followers, No ads, No Bullshit” it seeks to promote living a life unedited and authentic among social media users. Especially with all the edits, photoshop, filters and Facetune out there on other social media platforms, the app serves as a refreshing reminder to all who use social media to live in the moment and be comfortable with the true unedited version of ourselves.

Living in the moment is something that a lot of people, including me, don’t take advantage of. Wanting to record and take pictures of everything or going out with friends to just take pictures that we spend hours editing later – it’s no surprise the level that social media and technology consume our lives is incredibly high. Yet despite this, it’s great to see the integration of social media and actual reality be combined in an app that does not pride itself on showing off, phoniness and edited versions of ourselves.

While many of my friends have had this app long before me, I finally decided to jump on the bandwagon and download the app. To be quite honest at first, I thought this app was going to be like Snapchat where these posts daily are the new “streaks.” But WOW my mind changed!

Being able to see what my friends are doing in real-time not only satisfies my need to be nosey, but I do love being able to see the cool and interesting things my friends are doing at the same time as me. Even though I might be taking a nap at 2:00 pm on a Friday, I love getting to see my friends on a trip to France, getting ready to go to a concert, or even seeing them working on their internships for the summer. Being able to see my friends who don’t live in the same state as me once a day makes me feel a bit more connected to them and I’m so grateful to see an app that prides itself on realness and true connection.

And on top of that, getting to see what others who are outside of my friends post on the app is really cool too. The app has an additional feed that allows users to post on a bigger feed that has people from everywhere posting their BeReals in real time.

Even on TikTok, people are showing off their favorite BeReals they have taken with the #BeReal trending across millions of users. From taking selfies with celebrities like Justin Bieber and Ross Lynch to sharing how the app has contributed to keeping in touch with relatives to even asking random strangers to partake in the photo with them, the hype is here and people are living for it.

And even though many of the BeReals that people share are insanely cool and have others wishing to be with them in real time, others have been depressing and/or shocking to see. Some have posted BeReals with them breaking up with their partners at the exact minute the alert goes off. Others have posted BeReals of attending a family funeral and one girl even posted the moment of a family putting down their pet dog. I guess you could say that the dedication to BeReal is REAL, but my jaw dropped when I saw how deep these BeReals can get.

Even if some of the moments seen are tragic and heartbreaking, seeing how people live in real life is the whole point of this activity. The entire purpose of the app is to be authentic and when it comes to living on this rollercoaster of life, the app helps humanize the events people are going through. It intentionally highlights and shows the events that we would never consider “Insta-worthy” and reminds us that there’s more to life than filters and edits. 

While BeReal may not necessarily be the cure for my social media craze or for the way I live my life on the internet, one thing for sure is that it serves as a reminder for me to try and live my life as authentically as possible. Especially in a time where influencers and social media elites have taken over social media and have saturated these platforms to an extreme, it’s incredibly refreshing to see something like BeReal thriving.

So, if you haven’t downloaded the app yet or haven’t been reeled in yet from all the hype, I would definitely encourage you to try it out just as I did and finally learn to be real on social media.

What are your thoughts on BeReal? I hope this helps you figure out how to use BeReal app! Do you think it does a great job of trying to live a life on social media authentically? Let us know in the comments below!

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