A French social media app which encourages its users to be their most authentic selves has gained popularity in recent months, but concerns have now been raised about privacy online.
BeReal, founded by Alexis Barreyat and Kévin Perreau in late 2019, is currently no.1 on the iPhone App Store for free apps, beating mainstays WhatsApp and Facebook for the top spot.
The app sends out a prompt at a random time once per day telling its users to take simultaneous photographs using their front- and back-facing cameras - without filters - within a two-minute timeframe. Users can see their friends' photographs only after they've posted their own images.
While the images are shared within a closed network, there is also an option for the photographs to be shared publicly through the 'discovery feed'.
NetSafe spokesperson Sean Lyons says it's about getting people to "curate less" and "just to create a picture that says this is who I am and what I’m doing at a particular point in time".
He said BeReal offers users a platform which does away with the pressures involved in "getting just the right picture, looking into it the right way and being in just the right place".
"I think BeReal is sort of a response in some way to that in saying ‘you don’t have time to do that ... Take a picture right now in the next two minutes' and that gives a sense of ‘this is exactly who we all are’ with no dressing, with not too much emphasis or no room for doctoring photos or filtering at all.
"It’s not about spending days or weeks working out what you’re going to take and travelling off to some fancy location to make it look like your life’s more awesome than it actually is. It’s just about saying ‘here I am now’ and then I guess starting a conversation with people based on that."
However, there are concerns around privacy, with the images providing information about where a person is at a particular point in time.
Lyons said while the images are set to private by default, which is a "good step in the right direction", the images are also "geolocated by default".
“It’s something to be really conscious of. We’re not just saying, ‘This is me and who I am’ - we’re also saying ‘this is me and this is where I was at exactly this time when this picture was taken.'"
BeReal is also being marketed for children ages 12 and up, which Lyons said is "a pretty standard age for many for social media apps".
While it's assumed users belonging to that age group are able to make informed decisions around what they share online and with whom, Lyons said parents or guardians of young people shouldn't "assume that that means they have the skills, they have the knowledge".
He said parents or guardians should have important conversations "so that we know they’re aware of what it is they’re sharing, that they’re aware what some of the challenges or risks might be and that they know what to do if something goes wrong".
But he also warned that as its popularity continues to spread, children younger than 12 may see it as "something that’s cool and aspirational and might try using it".
"We will find, eventually, that people will change their date of birth, do other things to get around it and will be using these kinds of apps at a much younger age than was intended.”
Lyons advised young people to be aware of "exactly what it is they’re sharing".
"You need to think very carefully about whether or not you intend to do that, but also you need to be aware of what you need to do as a user of this app if something goes wrong."
"It really is about making sure that they are feeling that they are in control of what it is that they’re sharing."
Parents and guardians, meanwhile, have been advised to have a conversation with young people about what content they are sharing, who they are sharing it with and the risks involved.
"Like with so many apps, it’s an opportunity for parents to talk to young people about what they know about keeping themselves safe and if they’re not satisfied or they’re not confident that young people know what to do in potentially difficult situations, there is an opportunity to help support them,.
"Learn alongside them if you’re not sure what the app is but make sure before anybody posts anything, that you as a parent and your young person are happy and are knowledgeable about what’s going on before you make the decision to share content."
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