Features
To BeReal or not to BeReal
By: Jen Ginsberg Updated May 30, 2026
On a hot August morning, Ashlyn Rhyne’s phone vibrated as her BeReal notification went off. She had two minutes to take two photos — one photo from the front-facing camera and the other as a selfie — and post it to the BeReal app. She purposely ignored the notification.
That afternoon, she was snapping photos of the UNC-Chapel Hill football team at their game against Florida A&M University. The sea of Carolina blue shirts behind her, the cheerleaders right beside her, the anticipation of the next touchdown, and the players rushing past made it a picture perfect moment. She knew that it was time.
She whipped out her phone and asked a friend to be in her BeReal for the day. Her BeReal captures them having fun at the football game, but it was also eight hours after the original notification. Rhyne wanted to capture the most exciting part of her day to post on her BeReal, rather than something mundane from that morning.
Rhyne isn’t alone. While BeReal prompts users to show what they are doing at a random moment in the day, some users take it as a time to wait for a perfect moment and make their life seem interesting at every hour. BeReal uses the phrase, “your friends for real,” and encourages people to connect with others in the present moment. Some users see the app as a way to show the more exciting moments in their life to make others think that they are leading an ideal life. BeReal, for some users, isn’t their real life.
BeReal was founded in June 2019 by Alexis Barreyat and Kévin Perreau in France. Users get a push notification at a random time of the day and only have a short period to take and upload their photos. If you take a photo after the two minute window, your friends are notified that you were “late” with your post. In the summer of 2022, the app took off. In July it hit #1 on the Apple App Store and currently has over 100 million downloads. Unlike the traditional social media apps, BeReal doesn’t offer users the chance to edit their photos. To keep users engaged on the platform, users are only allowed to see their friends' daily photos once users post their photo for the day.
Even though the app prompts users to post about their unfiltered day, some users decide to take their BeReals when they are doing something exciting. Gillian Faski studied abroad over the summer in 2022 and planned her BeReal posts around what she was doing that day.
“I would go to Paris or Dublin and I’d be like ‘oh I need to get a BeReal here.’ So I can look back and remember the actual moment. So if [the BeReal notification] went off at a time when I wasn’t there yet, I would wait until I was actually at the venue,” Faski said. “So I can reflect back on actually being in the moment. Just for my own memories, I thought it would be more cool to do that for myself and not other people.”
While Faski posted late almost every day of the summer, Lucero Rocha believes that waiting for the perfect moment of your day to post ruins the authenticity and goal of the app.
“I hate when people post late — unless it’s really good or funny. I want to know what you’re doing in that moment, not five hours or twelve hours later,” Rocha said. “That’s the whole point of BeReal — to be real.”
Rhyne also remarked that while being late to BeReal could be a matter of just missing the notification (she keeps her phone on Do Not Disturb which is why she is chronically late to posting her BeReal most days), she is a firm believer that some people plan their BeReals for the best moment of their day.
Rhyne said, “I think, because it tells you if somebody posts late, especially if it's like, the next morning. So there are some people like some of my close friends, then I'd be like, yeah, I definitely know they waited for this moment.”
A BeReal postBeReal encourages users to be in the moment and be authentic. The BeReal company website states, “BeReal is the place where you get to see what your friends are actually doing, not what they’re pretending to do. It's the only platform where real people post every day, so you can make real connections with those who really matter.”
Gary Kayye, a professor in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media who specializes in social media branding and marketing, said, “I think TikTok and BeReal are closer to reality than Facebook or Instagram or even Snap[chat]. But, I think [BeReal] has a good shot of being big as it's the antithesis of what is there now. That's appealing.”
On BeReal’s company site it says it is, “a new and unique way to discover who your friends really are in their daily life.” BeReal does allow users to post after the two minute notification, with the only drawback being that the user cannot see their friends' photos until they post. So, when Rhyne waited for that perfect moment, all she lost out on was being able to see small glimpses of everyone else’s day.
“No matter what time I post, I always look at everyone’s BeReal,” Rhyne said. “I might not look right then, like right after I post, but I will look at some point.”
While BeReal promises its users authenticity and a genuine look into their friends lives, staging a BeReal has become part of the norm. Their BeReal life is not a reflection of their real life and strays from the goal of the app. Rocha remarked, “You can post late and you can retake your BeReal but everyone knows it and knows you aren’t being real.”