The latest trends are typically something teens are caught up with, whether it be fashion, food, or social media. BeReal is the newest app with a teen fanbase that sends users a notification to post a picture of whatever they’re doing at that moment. It has a time limit of two minutes to post after the notification is sent out, and allows you to view your friends’ posts. The app was released in December of 2019, but didn’t hit its peak in popularity until the summer of 2022. BeReal gained a lot of its popularity based on the fact that the app’s focus is to show the distinction between what people post on Instagram or TikTok versus the reality of what they’re actually doing.

Sophomore Avery Adams had no idea what BeReal was until her friends kept asking her to be in their posts. After hearing about the app so much, Adams decided to download it.

“I love BeReal,” Adams said. “It’s a good form of social media because you can’t edit things, and you just have to post what you’re doing right then and there. It’s good for having an open mindset and realizing not everything online is real.”

The main appeal of the app seems to be the fact that the notification only goes off once a day for a certain amount of time.

“I’m on it every day whenever the notification goes off,” Adams said.

Though the app is a clever idea, many agree that BeReal won’t stay popular very long because it’s just another trend. Sophomore Gabby Vermette uses BeReal pretty regularly but is starting to skip the notifications.

“I think it’ll die out soon for sure like how the app Poparazzi did,” Vermette said.

Another factor adding to people losing interest would be the quality of the app. Users have found that BeReal has taken a long time to load and can be extremely glitchy.

“The app quality sucks, like the layout and everything,” Vermette said. “It’s so slow and it just doesn’t work good.”

Along with that, BeReal became popular in the summer, which raises the question of how it will affect school. As much as nobody wants to admit it, it’s definitely a struggle to stay off our phones during class. Charlie Evers (10) admits to always being on his phone when the notification pops up.

“I think it wouldn’t help phone addiction because if you see the notification, you’re probably going to do it right away,” Evers said.

On the other hand, other students don’t think it’ll be a problem when it comes to phone addictions.

“It only goes off once a day, so you can only really do stuff on it once a day and lately it’s been going off after school, or at night,” Adams said.

From a teacher’s perspective though, if everyone is whipping out their phones all at once to post, it probably comes across as disrespectful. Unless the timing is right, it’s definitely easier to get distracted by the app, and it’s more than fair to say the app has got this generation temporarily hooked.