We live in the time of social media. The time of putting our best selves on the internet.

Yes, the generation or two before us had Facebook and Myspace, but neither of those were as widespread as social media is now. It seems as if you don’t have Instagram or Snapchat, that is something weird.

Snapchat is the way lots of college and high school students now communicate.

Now there are influencers on all these different sites who show off their vacations and all the fun things they are doing. They fail to show the other side of their lives. We typically only see the fun, eventful parts.

It seems that everyone is wrapped up in social media and the new trends.

Being real and showing all aspects of your life and not just romanticizing or glamourising is something that people sometimes forget.

In comes BeReal. BeReal is a new social media app that sends you a notification at some point during the day and you have two minutes to post whatever you are doing then and there. A photo with both the front and rear-facing camera is taken.

It is a different time each day so there is no way to prepare for it. The app is about being real and seeing what other people’s real lives are like.

While you can post late to the app it tells all your followers you were late. This leads to the question if you were really being real.

This is an interesting idea. Does changing the narrative of what social media is and what it could be change people’s opinions on social media?

Currently, BeReal is a very popular app, especially amongst high school and college-age students. You choose who can see your posts and whose posts you want to see. This allows the app to be customizable. You can be more private or more social depending on your taste.

This app is “not another social network” and is currently no. 7 in the top free apps in social media according to the Google Play Store.

I like the concept. It only takes up 2 minutes of your day and then you can see what others are doing versus other apps where people seem to be endlessly scrolling and get overloaded with information from all the posts.

In a society that is always on the move and always wanting to know what is going on in other people’s lives, this is a great way to stay real with it. It is a positive way to connect with friends and their reality.

From my personal experience, my friends and I try our best to take the photo on time, however, we are sometimes in class or just don’t get the notification. While we are being real about what we are doing it is typically us doing homework.

Along with that whether with people or alone people are typically smiling which in reality would not always be the case.

There are times when people are having fun and you can save memories within the app itself. It is fun being able to look back at a moment in time when you took the time to just take a photo without posing or planning.

Another fun piece with the app is that you could find out something new about a person because people are not always transparent in person.

Altogether the app is a fun way to connect with friends and just be real.

Geske can be reached at [email protected].