Position Paper 1

 Mobile Apps - BeReal

Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and other social media apps are more prominent in everyday life than ever before. Our society is constantly evolving and a common trend within social media nowadays seems to be showing the more "real" version of everyone's lives. People are becoming more and more aware of how fake social media actually is when you open your eyes a bit wider, being honest and a non-filter-using social media trend is spreading around in the world of social media. The Application BeReal seems to have been the leader in this direction as the application was released in 2020 with the goal to make social media more realistic and less polished. 

BeReal is a French social media app developed by Alexis Barreyat and Kevin Perreau. The app was released in 2020 and gained popularity in early 2022. During random times once a day, the BeReal application sends out a notification to its users for them to take a picture of what they are doing at that exact moment. Users have two minutes to take the picture which uses both the front and back camera on the phone so both the moment and their faces are being captured. The BeReal application is focusing on authenticity and is asking for its users to be real in their posting on the social media app. Users are able to retake their photos but in that case, the app will show the number of times a user is retaking their post. Different fro many other social media apps, the BeReal application does not have a "like" option available, instead, there is a way of reacting to your friends' posts with a RealMoji. Another thing that stands out with this app compared to other social media is that you cannot see other people's follower/friends amount, you can only see how many friends you have yourself. The users can choose for their photos to only be shown to their friends or to the public. It is common to see your friends in their daily activities such as cooking, doing homework, working, or shopping. In order for the users to see their friends' posts they have to post first before seeing it. Since the application was released it has been downloaded more than 53 million times as of October last year, and the majority of the downloads came from the United States. 

Jeff Williams, global head of security at Prague-based antivirus software maker Avast, says that the application is having some privacy concerns. This is due to the fact that the photos are available for the company for 30 years and they can repurpose users' photos in any form. The photos you are capturing with the app are also capturing your location data automatically unless you change it in the settings for the application. The photos are being taken quickly and can't be edited, which also creates the factor of potentially private information being shared unintentionally. (AARP)

One big difference with this social media app compared to most of the other apps within the field of social media is the amount of time being spent on it daily. Since the application is sending out a notification once a day that means that the users are avoiding spending multiple hours on it throughout the day. Personally, this is one of the things with this application that I really like because I think that people are spending too much time on their phones. Even I can be caught up in scrolling through my social media for hours daily, such as TikTok and Instagram, but with BeReal it is not the same since it is a "once a day" thing rather than more and more posts being added throughout the whole day. 

As an international student in the United States, originally from Sweden, I am really enjoying this application because it is a great way for me to connect with my friends back home. Being a student here in the U.S. it sometimes seems to me that I am living two different lives, one over here and the other one in Sweden. Therefore I really like that I can see what my friends back home are up to, during the times I can't connect with them over a phone call. 

One thing that I have noticed with the app and how "real" it actually is, is that some users are waiting to post their daily BeReal until they are doing something fun that day. Since there is an option to post late, waiting to post until you are doing something that might look better than just a photo of you doing homework might be a good option for some people. This option more or less ruins the purpose of the app for the users to be more "real" compared to other social media applications. Also, the option to retake your BeReal post is taking away the purpose of the application. These two things would be something that the developers can take a look at to improve the application even more in order to achieve the most real content possible. The developers are constantly listening to their users when they mention things that are driving the application away from the "real-state", and changes have been made due to those "complaints".  

Overall I think this application is a very good application and it is an app I enjoy using with both friends and family members. It is a great way to connect with friends and I believe it is the most real social media application there is today without filters etc. I think this is an app that will stay popular for a while more due to its realness and different approach to the whole "like" and "followers" function, and overall its realness. But I still think there are some things that can improve with the app to improve its main goal to push toward a more "real" social media culture compared to most of the other social medias there is today.