The other day, at the end of an afternoon class, as I was saying random goodbyes to my students, three of them suddenly jumped up and said, “Sensei! Be real! Be real!” They then held up their phones one at a time and demanded I pose for selfies with them. I’m not the kind to reject an offer for a photo op, but I couldn’t help taking a little offense at their inference that I hadn’t been “real” in my interactions with them during class. So I pressed them on it: “Why are you asking me to ‘be real’ with you now? Don’t you think I’m real when I teach?”
An all too familiar flotilla of confused looks surfaced on their faces as they gazed back at me and tried to interpret what I was asking them. Then one of them raised her phone and said, “No, look. It’s BeReal time! The apuri (app)!” At once the spell of inertia was broken and all three of them, nodding excitedly, showed me their own versions of the phone app BeReal, each displaying the pictures we had just taken. Apparently, the end of my class had coincided with one of BeReal’s randomly occurring two-minute posting sessions, during which users are supposed to stop what they’re doing to share quick, unplanned photos of themselves wherever they are, whatever they’re doing, whoever they’re with. It’s supposed to be the “anti-Instagram” because the time limit discourages them from preparing rehearsed or over-produced content.
We can all agree, can’t we, that most SNS apps have totally lost their well-meaning original purposes? There’s almost nothing instant about Instagram, with reel after reel of staged street cons, quick-cut cat-vid compilations, marriage proposal stunt bloopers, and so on. (I confess that “Crash Dash” videos are a guilty pleasure for me, real or not.). We’ve started calling these apps “Fakebook,” “Shamstagram,” or “TrikTok” for all the “reality” we find there. Twitter strayed so far from its “140 conscientiously curated characters” premise that it changed its name to “X,” which in many contexts means, “I don’t even know how to write my own name.”
So when BeReal says it wants to upset the SNS status quo with its “be spontaneous, no faking” rules for photos and videos, I’m tempted to just smile my broccoli-in-the-teeth smile and play along. After all, as a rule, I’m in favor of anything setting itself up as “anti-[insert trendy behavior/product here].” I worry, though, that the way BeReal conditions its users to react to irregularly timed posting sessions might end up reducing their attention spans even lower than SNS already has. With most apps, you can at least choose when and how much to focus on producing your “instant” reel. BeReal could turn us into preoccupied drones who spend the day with “When? When?” churning in the back of our minds as we nervously plot interesting places to be or poses to make when the notification comes. I don’t think it’s too much to speculate that—for some people—a BeReal notification combined with large doses of caffeine could be a coronary risk.
BeReal even admits in its own advertising that it causes distracted behavior. On its download site in Google Play—right after promising to challenge your creativity and to show your friends who you really are—it says, “BeReal may cause accidents, especially if you are riding bikes.” It really says that! “Causes accidents” is not my idea of a principled selling point. I certainly hope that my gastroenterologist doesn’t give in to BeReal prompts to take a quick selfie during gallbladder surgery.
You might surmise by all this cyber-sniping that I’m out of touch with the SNS world. But as a matter of fact, it turns out that even my Japanese college students might be behind the times with BeReal, which apparently had its heyday in Europe four years ago. In cyber-time, that’s eons. According to the New York Times, BeReal peaked in the USA in 2022, but its regular activity dropped by more than half the following year. Former users confessed that they grew tired of daily notifications reminding them that they were in the same place, doing the same lame day job that they were doing the day before. BeReal made them feel BoRing.
This statement is as good a way as any of illustrating my personal SNS philosophy: Those who have a life tend to live it, while those who don’t have a life tend to “upload content.” For me, the ideal “be real” app would be one that notifies me to shut it off immediately and go for a bike ride.