“Yo, BeReal went off.”
“I gotta take my BeReal.”
“Wanna be in my BeReal?”
“Hey, Mrs. Smale, will you take my BeReal?”

BeReal is a new social media app that is encouraging people to get away from their usual heavily filtered feed and start ‘being real.’ BeReal goes off once a day at a random time and the user has two minutes to take a picture of whatever they are doing, wherever they are with their front and back camera at the same time. If the user posts after the two minutes, it will say at the top of their BeReal that they posted late. If the user retakes their BeReal before they post it, the user’s friends can see how many times they retook their BeReal.

The user cannot see their friends’ BeReals until after they’ve posted their own. When the user is scrolling though their friends’ BeReals, they can send their friends “real reactions.” Real reactions are little selfies with different emojis in the corner that the user can basically comment on their friends’ BeReals. This is called reacting to a BeReal.

Once the next BeReal notification goes off, everyone’s previous BeReal disappears and the user can no longer see their friends’ past BeReals. However, the user has their own BeReal memories under their profile where they can view all their own past BeReals. The user can only see their own memories though, not their friends’. The memories section of the app is set up like a calender and the user can click on each day to see their BeReal from that day.

BeReal may be a social media app, but it is different from most. BeReal encourages users to stop filtering life. You can not edit or filter your BeReals. Things people post on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are filtered and edited to make everything look perfect.

Many people get depressed looking through other social media feeds because they often compare themselves to others and their “perfect” lives, when in reality it is all fake. BeReal shows everything that other apps encourage you to hide. BeReal shows everyday life, no makeup, sitting in class, lazy days at home, and everything else that people try and hide to make it look like they have a picture perfect life.

“It needs to be unfiltered because people need to see what’s really going on,” sophomore Arber Nebo said. “I mean, it is a 50/50 thing too. You only post on Instagram every couple months because people you’re not close with only need to see the good part. Your whole story is only for people close to you.”

Many students share similar views on BeReal and unfiltered life.

“I see people post whenever the timer goes off and they’re just at home, in bed, no makeup and theres no filters because BeReal doesn’t have the filters,” junior Grace Jenkins said. “It just makes you feel more normal because things like TikTok and Instagram are so glamorized, so BeReal really just takes off that filter on life.”

Seeing unfiltered life can also bring us together in a way and show us we’re not so different.

“It kind of gives us a sense of humanity that we all have. It kind of humbles us in a way. Everyone thinks that we are always doing something fun and exciting, but sometimes when the timer goes off you’re really just sitting in bed,” senior Stephanie Kreste said. “It is just very relatable, you see people post just laying in bed and you think to yourself ‘oh, I’ll just do that too because I am doing the same thing.’ It just shows that even though I may always be busy, there are certain times where I’m really just not doing anything.”

BeReal also helps us stop comparing ourselves to the filtered versions of our friends.

“BeReal taught me to not care,” Kreste said. “It helped me to stop looking at social media in a comparing way.”

BeReal shows people the real side of everyone’s life. It shows people as they are.

“I think it is good to have unfiltered feed,” sophomore Mark Camaj said. “That way people aren’t building up a false persona of themselves.”

However, not all people agree that unfiltered social media is positive.

“Filtered social media has proven to be beneficial,” sophomore Sam Vassilev said, “especially for when people are not confident. They can put a filter or something on their pictures to make them look how they like.”

Some users don’t even use BeReal as intended to make it so that the unfiltered is really still somewhat filtered.

“A lot of people fake their BeReals if they are doing something exciting that day. For example, when I went to see Harry Styles I held off my BeReal all day until the concert,” senior Makenna Riggs said. “I wanted to show everyone like ‘oh my god, look where I am. I’m seeing Harry Styles while you guys are at school.’ So I feel like a lot of people fake their BeReals to look more fun and exciting.”

Despite some people using BeReal in a different way or thinking the unfiltered isn’t needed, many people say unfiltered feed has helped their mental health.

“Seeing people on BeReal has really helped me to realize that not everything is perfect,” junior Akiyah Henderson said. “It made me realize that people don’t always look like their Instagram.”