I am a fan of the BBC show Black Mirror, which means I never hesitate to reference it in my daily life. Whether it’s when my friends can’t stop scrolling through TikTok while we’re sharing a meal, or when I see people crossing the street with their noses in their phones, my signature catchphrase is, “This is just like Black Mirror!”. Some of my accusations can be quite extreme (like my vendetta against Fitbits), but when I was introduced to the platform BeReal, I couldn’t help but compare it to the show.
BeReal was developed by Alexis Barreyat and Kévin Perreau in the year 2020, with the intention of creating a platform that showcases the real, unedited versions of its users. Its premise is that every single user will be notified at the same time to take a set of two photos— one from the selfie camera, and one from the back-facing camera.
This rang alarm bells for me the first time I heard it— everyone in the world? On their phones? At the same time? This must be some sort of government tactic to control the mindless phone-addicted sheep that make up our society, I thought.
Okay, that’s a stretch… Or is it?
Whether we want to admit it or not, the majority of our generation is addicted to our phones to some degree. For some, this means that they have to play the New York Times mini every day, and for others, this means that they can’t sit through a class without checking their phone every minute.
According to Statistics Canada, in 2018, 97.9% of Canadians aged 15-24 had a cellphone, 72.6% of whom checked their phone right before bed. I am no stranger to this— in fact, I have developed a penchant for 1:00 a.m. viewings of videos of Reddit threads that overlay a Subway Surfers game in the background. This is a phenomenon that I am sure many members of our generation have become partial to as well.
57.5% of the total 97.7% checked their phone at least every thirty minutes, and 64.6% used their phone while they watched TV. This would have sounded absurd to me as a child— it doesn’t make sense to interact with TV and another form of media simultaneously— but now, I understand. I can’t tell if it’s a need for sensory stimulation, or if it’s a fear of missing out, but I’ll find myself on my phone when I sit down to watch TV: tapping through the Instagram stories, saving pins to my future house board on Pinterest (let’s face it, I’m never going to have an orange SMEG), even scrolling through LinkedIn—anything that’s on my phone is game.
This reveals another issue in our generation: most of us have become incapable of being alone without heaps of sensory stimulation to keep us company. When was the last time you were by yourself and didn’t listen to music, or watch something on your phone, or have any form of sensory activity at all? To be frank, I think that we’re afraid of being isolated with our thoughts. Maybe it feels like we’re alone in this world. Perhaps that’s why we rely on social media so desperately— so we can connect with others when we need it most.
But does social media really feed our innate desire to feel like valuable members of society? Does posting a BeReal every day at the same time as everyone else on the planet give us worth? Or do we not care about being valued members of society and instead long for meaningful connections with others, the majority of which are achieved through social media?
Whatever your answer to those questions may be, we can still come to a consensus— BeReal is a sign of our generation’s dependency on social media— positive and negative— whether we like it, or not.
References
Statistics Canada. (2018). Smartphone use and smartphone habits by gender and age group. Canada. https://doi.org/10.25318/2210011501-eng