LOS ALAMITOS, CA — The hit new social media app “BeReal” has taken Generation Z by storm by showing the reality of your friends’ real lives.

Initially released in 2020 as a sponsorship program between university students, the app quickly gained traction during the summer of 2022. As of August, over 10.5 million users log in daily to document typically mundane and typical activities. However, as more and more users begin to log on every day, users have begun to express displeasure with user inauthenticity, explicitly counteracting the company’s initial purpose.

“I would literally wait till I was doing something cool during the day and then take my photos,” Shilah Skurki, junior, said. Although it is hard for each and every one of the millions of users to accurately portray the reality of their daily life, 44.4% of poll respondents from the Los Al student body acknowledged retaking or delaying the capture of images of their day on the app during a two-week period. BeReal is not an app that takes advantage of its users, and users are not taking advantage of the service in any way. It is merely a chance to take further pictures.

“I don’t think people are trying to make their lives look cool or anything… it’s literally just some people can’t take a photo exactly when the notification goes off,” Grace Phelps, senior, said. Only one arbitrary notice per day is sent out to record a recipient’s life in order to maintain the app’s “authenticity.” As a result, people may publish their images “late” as they are normally sleeping or not around the social media app.

“I see people all the time retaking photos, I’m not even kidding, dozens of times, so they can get the right angle. It’s kinda pathetic, honestly,” Kyan Whiten said. Unfortunately, users struggle with the reality that every moment of someone’s life isn’t always the most interesting; laying in bed or eating lunch doesn’t make someone’s life any less exciting.

BeReal has the potential to transform from a benign social media program into yet another awful nightmare, despite the fact that it is now benign. This may just serve to highlight the drawbacks of social media: no matter how hard an app tries, commercial considerations and human nature will eventually duplicate concerns with addiction and social comparison.

BeReal enables users to show people exactly what they want them to see. It is not more authentic than other social networking applications even if participants can only post once per day.