If you’re curious what a ‘geriatric millennial’ makes of a social media app much loved by Gen-Z, then you’re in luck! This week I had the privilege of writing the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity’s Connecting with Culture, and I chose to offer a few thoughts on BeReal.

The concept is simple. Users receive a daily notification, giving them two minutes to post a simultaneous front and back camera photo from their phone. The dual photo means that people share both what they look like and what they’re doing, no matter how unglamorous either might be. No filters. No edits. Just a real, authentic snapshot of our day.

In short, I think there is plenty to celebrate about this app, but for those truly seeking authenticity, at some point we have to move beyond images to words; beyond a screen to embodied community.

You can check out the article here.

Fun additional story that wasn’t relevant enough to include in the article… The other week someone asked me to move out of his way in a coffee shop, because I was in the way of his back camera shot. Not really in the spirit of the app. Clearly I wasn’t deemed interesting enough to feature in his ‘reality’! Make of that what you will.

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Photo by Nijwam Swargiary on Unsplash

Photo by Amy Humphries on Unsplash