It's rare a new social media platform appears to shake up the internet, with innovators like TikTok building on precedents set by forebears like Vine and YouTube.
But photo sharing app BeReal seemed to really take off, offering users an 'authentic' look into the daily lives of friends and urging them to bring their 'realest' self to the plate.
However, according to The Business of Apps, daily usage has fallen to half that of October 2022, despite only hitting the mainstream last year and continued download success.
With authenticity seeming to be championed by Gen Z, it is odd that this app could be falling by the wayside in favour of traditional platforms.
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The Mirror spoke to Gen Zers who found themselves ditching BeReal already, despite the app's growing downloads.
"I think initially it worked as a form of escapism despite literally being a microscope into life, however mundane it was when the notification went of" said Torin Budd, "but I think the novelty of it has worn off."
BeReal asks its users to post once a day within a two minute window that pops up at a random time every day. The app uses both the front and back camera simultaneously to take a selfie and a picture of your surroundings, to show all your friends what you're up to.
Users can post "late" but friends will be notified that you're doing so - and how many times you retook that picture to get it perfect. A key feature of the app is that you cannot see your friends' pictures until you post your own and everything vanishes when the next daily alert comes through.
Torin, from Winchester, was an early adopter of BeReal and downloaded it as it picked up popularity in spring 2021. He added: "It was a trend at the time and it was quite an inventive idea."
Fellow Gen Z, Ami Clements agrees, saying she enjoyed "how unique it was to share both sides of the camera". She added: "At first, everyone posted as soon as it went off, so it felt very raw and real."
But innovation has halted with the app failing to "introduce any new features", according to Torin, despite initial excitement and dedication to the daily notifications.
Londoner Caitlin Charles' time on the app was short-lived as the 22-year-old said: "About a week after downloading the app I started to post considerably less, until I deleted it 3 weeks later.
"For many people it’s no longer 'being real' and is now just another curated form of Instagram or Snapchat stories. Another reason why I deleted it was the pressure to be posting something quirky or cool each day.
"On those days where I just wanted to lie in bed, I would be thinking about what to post on BeReal so I didn’t look like a loser."
Caitlin noted that the app also worked poorly with a well-documented lag issue, especially if you're relying on data to load the timed camera function.
"I find that I never respond to the notification when I am actually out having fun or doing something interesting," added Ami, from Lancaster, "I only pay attention to it when I am not busy, or bored, thus making my actual picture also boring."
She explained: "It was a novelty at first but when you see snippets of a person’s routine every day, it just becomes boring. Now everyone knows what it is and knows they can choose to respond to the notification later, it has lost its charm."
"I think Gen Z are far too influenced by trends and how others want to see them, rather than being authentic," Torin shared. "It made me more attached to a social media platform than I have been for a long time, but once the novelty ended I quickly lost interest."
Despite this abandonment among Gen Z looking for something authentic, BeReal continues to have success growing from 920,000 users at the start of 2022 to 73.5 million in August that year.
The intimacy and perceived 'realness' drew people in, but the mundanity of reality appears to have pushed people on the app to no longer 'be real' and post images that Caitlin thinks are "even more curated than before".
It's possible the authenticity of the app has become victim to the over-curated nature of social media that it tried to set itself apart from.
Caitlin concluded: "BeReal made me realise that we can never actually be real on social media. We are choosing what to post, when to post, who to post… it is a series of decisions to create the perfect image, and true spontaneity can’t be achieved."
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