New social media app BeReal is trending at colleges as 'casual Instagram'

Between January 2021 and February 2022, BeReal gained close to four million downloads globally on the App Store and Google Play, according to data from Sensor Tower. — Photo by ROBIN WORRALL on Unsplash

On a recent Saturday night, around 10pm, Sukhmani Kaur, an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, watched as two of her friends received an attention-grabbing notification on their phones. "Time to BeReal,” it read.

In response, they hastily snapped photos of themselves and their dinner, which they then rushed to share online. When Kaur asked what they were doing, her friends explained that they were using a newfangled social media app called BeReal.