It's six in the afternoon. Notice on your phone. You have two minutes to make the photo and share it with your friends. Yesterday, at 12 noon, you received the same message, and tomorrow will, of course, also arrive at what time. Two minutes. No matter where and where you are, walking down the street, in the bar, at school, in bed, or sitting down the toilet… You have to take a photo and a second to the landscape, to the person or to whom you are. You cannot use filters or other image editing tools. The goal is to show what you are doing in the moment, not to give the option to “prepare” for the photo and show yourself “more authentic”. Because we know you get a bit bored by social media that shows the entire universe like a rainbow.

BeReal is the most downloaded app by young people in 2022. Experts say it is designed to compete with Instagram to the extent that it aims to overcome “posture” and show a more true picture of reality. In fact, sexologist and psychologist Ane Ortiz Ballesteros has explained that there are people who are approaching “idyllic images” that spread through different applications. She works in the Emaize center of Vitoria-Gasteiz, often with adolescents, around the role of technology in the process of identity construction and creation of relationships networks. “Young people are tired of constantly seeing things that are not accessible to them,” he says. It remains to be seen whether that “realistic” objective will go against the BeReal or whether, on the contrary, it will maintain its success. Meanwhile, if the culture of posture is running out, Ortiz doubts, although he sees changes.

Some hidden issues are emerging, and proof of this is that more and more influencers talk about their problems and diseases. “Everything before was so wonderful, so perfect,” he says. “Now young people are more likely to identify what happens to them, sometimes we feel bad and we don’t know very well why, because we don’t look. In addition, although a hegemonic profile still prevails, social networks are spaces of diversity where different realities, generalist experiences, many types of bodies come together… And in adolescence it is important to be references in the process of constructing our own identity”. This doesn't mean that your own problems will automatically disappear, but it helps you to share experiences with people who understand us, unlike problems or feelings, to speak up for the strangers in the world.

He believes that the desire to expel intimacy goes “beyond what might be an exercise in exhibitionism” and wants to “fix damaged self-esteem.” “People explain the intimate aspects of their lives in their attempt to seek the acceptance or empathy of others and, above all, to establish social ties.”

Shop window and post-shop

Many factors intervene in the development of our identity. There is an analogue map, off the Internet, family, friends... and digital, that we live, see and/or show on social networks. “On both planes we have our shop window,” explains Ortiz. We are continuously demonstrating what we want and providing information about ourselves. For example, today I'm going to wear something different, I'm going to play differently. And at the same time, we all have a backdoor where we keep things that
are important to us, but that others don't want to see, that are related to intimacy. In social networks, in general, the showcase of others is shown, but the background is not so much. And if we compare what they teach us to what we have stored after the store, it can be disappointing. According to the sexologist, “we are building our own identity through self-observation and comparison, and today we are looking more inward than outward. Instead of asking, who am I? we call ourselves ‘I want to be like that’, losing the construction of our own identity. Because at all times we have to compare it with, both analogical and digital, thousands of people.”

He tells us about the resignations of the capitalist system that have drawn us all: “We want to achieve everything in a moment and without much effort – today I have bought two products on Amazon and tomorrow they will bring them home to me – and that affects all areas of our life, including relationships as partners. Seduction and cutting processes in analogue spaces have turned into a background and electronic devices have become a fundamental tool to unite or create new couples.”

Capitalism is not invented by social media.

As the political scientist Iker Madrid wrote in his article The role of Instagram in the configuration of our identity, published on the web Counterculture, “The role of Instagram in the configuration of our identity”, “The created by Instagram or any other social network, whether positive or negative, was already in society, has not emerged from scratch. (...) They are like Instagram, Twitter or Facebook because they are embedded in a concrete structure, capitalism, a concrete business model. Instagram does not generate new behaviors, existential patterns or social procedures, but multiplies them, annuls them, promotes, smoothes or reformulates”.

The author raises an interesting debate about the relationship between the main characteristics of neoliberal society, such as competitiveness, and behaviors that break social networks: “In these spaces we intend to give an image of total happiness without abrasion, sacrificing or concealing some emotions (sadness, anger, despair, suffering, anxiety...) until we can produce ruptures in our interior. This does not mean that social networks are the only factors that cause cracks in mental health, but can increase them.”

Simplifying and simplifying is not the same

Tinder, Meetic, eDarling... there are many matching applications and, in addition, it can be linked through others not created for that purpose, such as Instagram or Tik Tok, with special codes or strategies: the photos, videos and profiles a person has uploaded are “like” and from there, it may be longer the way; the codes of which are not regular users, because the strategies have been changed. “Feminism has questioned many things, it has worked a lot on couple relationships,” he explains. However, although young people have internalized the discourse on the situation of violence or control mechanisms, they have difficulties to identify inadequate attitudes in the digital plane. “For example, when we ask students what their partner feels like to tell them how to dress, they know it’s wrong, but they doubt, for example, when their partner asks them to give them the Instagram password, or to have the location turned on at all times and with whom they are, to allow them to look at who has given them “likes”… They often see them as proof of love. We must understand that social networks are not only the intimate spaces of each one, but that whoever has access to our private content will also be able to see what our friends have done”.

To some extent, this coincidence, among other reasons, has led Emaiz’s sexologist to “simplify” and above all “speed up” the cutting processes, which does not mean that it is easy to find a partner: “On many occasions young people say that on a digital level it is easy to do the flirting or to declare themselves to taste, more difficult to reach the relationship, in the first steps virtually given there are many missing elements”. The same was told by some 15-year-old students from the Urretxu-Zumarraga (see picture). “Social networks might facilitate the discovery of the couple, mutual knowledge, but things are different. You tell him from the phone what he does not dare to say to the face and then...”

We've continued to talk to the young people with the courage to talk behind the screen: "You get angry with a friend and instead of talking to the face, you throw a lot of socks on your phone about him. People swell behind their phones. There are people who hide behind fake profiles, or who believe on behalf of a acquaintance or a friend, which happens less often, and from there they put the stacks. They feel more protected by the power to say anything.” “Yes, people are daring in Whatsapp,” says another group of 12-13 year-olds.

Ortiz thinks it's positive that networks have a space where people feel safe, free, to do what they wouldn't do on the analog level. “For the timid, struggling to make new friends, the digital map is a getaway. Of course, that is also in danger, what things they would not do in the analogue plane…”.

No spaces for intimacy

“When we fall in love we feel a great need to share with that person our intimacy and body,” explains the sexologist at the center Emaize. “However, young people do not have a quality space for their intimacy. They want to be calm, but suppose it rains and the parents are at home, they have nothing but to be in a garage or on a portal.” We asked him if he did not. “Also, but now there are new ingredients,” he says. “In the absence of these spaces, the practices of sexting and cybersex are rising; naturally, the digital plane has filled that gap.” Like everything else, this has advantages and disadvantages. Some risks disappear in the analogue plane (unplanned pregnancy, contagion of some disease...), you can press the ‘panic button’ from that dissatisfied space to notice, it breaks with the coitocentric model... but problems arise from digitalisation, especially those related to the violation of intimacy.

Pornstars in the mouths of twelve year olds

The mention of the coitocentric model has allowed us to talk about pornography. Ortiz explains that young people start consuming “erotic science fiction” long before the age of fifteen. Emaiz has carried out awareness-raising campaigns around the subject in various educational centers, such as the ikastola Andramari de Amorebieta, and questioned the parents. “We have to be aware that by buying a mobile we are giving access to those contents.” It says that the concept of pornography is very broad, but that the mainstream, which we could call mainstream or hegemonic, reproduces concrete models.

“One of the consequences of the development of the Internet is the massive expansion of pornography, unprecedented in the history of mankind,” we read on the website of the center of Vitoria. “People never consumed so much pornographic material, and especially from a very young age. (...) The porno-erotic model has become a book of instructions for all people, children, adolescents and young people who do not receive quality sexual education. The erotic dimension that all people have, that allows us to desire and feel the object of desire, is developing with the imitation of what porn teaches us. Instead of discovering our tastes and desires inwards, we look at the screen to tell us what we want or what we like.”

Ortiz explains through an example: “PornHub publishes statistics every year, collects, among others, the most sought after words in each state, and it is curious that when we discuss the topic in FP courses 5 and 6, students mention the actors most present in these statistics, a few years ago Mia Khalifa and lately Lana Rhoades. 12-year-olds already know these names. Or they ask you about anal practices, which is precisely what the people of PornHub look for the most.”

In the videos, on the other hand, there are no contraceptive methods, there is hardly any communication between the tap members, nor even the explanation of desire – well, perhaps more men – emotions are not reflected… “How are you your partner when we talk to the young?” is the answer: “How am I going to ask you that, what shame!” They have no other model. Adults have to give them the focus of sex education, because we are fighting a giant monster.”

In this way, the welfare of young people must be an objective, a good relationship with technology. “Adults have a different view, we have lived different ways of relating and from our experience we have to make a positive contribution,” says Ortiz. If we're always downplaying the digital or highlighting the worst, as if it were a hostile technology, we're going to get further away from young people. “We must understand that the mobile phone is a lot: camera, alarm clock, contact space, reading news, claiming, revolution… We must act from an axis of understanding, both in the analogue and digital level”.

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Instagram, Tik Tok... and just calls

A friend, the father of three boys and girls 12 to 15 years old, shows us two apps he has installed on his mobile, Family Link and Qustodio. He's put them in to control how long and what their kids spend on their cell phone. “My older son learned to hack Family Link, we noticed and we had the session… That’s why I also installed Qustodio, because it’s not a Gmail account, but my number.” On Instagram your son has also cheated creating a hidden profile. It's not the only one, if it's consolable to your father -- young people go one step or two more (almost) always. Your son spends more time playing on Instagram, Tik Tok, Whatsapp, Snapchat and lately also on BeReal. Just use your phone to make calls.

Instagram, Tik Tok... are where the children of a co-worker move. “When they were 12-13 years old we had a bit of control, but at 14-15 years old you get away, you realize there are fewer and fewer movements in the account you know... We said, now we just don't go into salsa to pray. We used to look occasionally at his things, and what we saw… But when we were in his intimacy, they got angry and we went back.” Young people also make very few mobile calls.

This is a more widespread phenomenon than we thought, and there are those who use the term “mute generation” to define the adolescents born in the digital environment. More and more young people are leaving their phones quietly and consider it normal that they do not respond to calls. They also get nervous if they're forced to talk on the phone. To order pizza, for example, if you can do it through the app, much better. We are not going to discuss what the cause and effect is, but in some of the McDonald’s around us screens have been placed so that the customer can place the order from it, without exchanging half a word with anyone. Machines in people's place. It would take a long time to write with tentacles of the capitalist system.

Antidote against boredom

“We also rarely call,” eight young people between 12 and 15 tell us. These are students of the ikastola Urretxu-Zumarraga, who have been interviewed in two groups about the most used applications. In general, children aged 12 to 13 only speak on the phone with their parents when it is urgent because “when they send the WhatsApp message they will answer who knows when”. Fifteen years use less and less WhatsApp to stay with their friends and communicate with their parents. And audio recordings, only with trusted people. Someone has ever spent throwing WatsApp, but “at the ikastola,” they are now in the liceo. “Then there was more chaos, today we are more conscious,” they say.

Most often they use Instagram and Tik Tok, the first to see photos or exchange messages, and the second to move on pad. From Tik Toki it is said that the user has a great capacity to engantzatxe thanks to a video offer that adapts to his likes. Snaptchat, BeReal, Netflix, Spotify -- everyone is used for different purposes. They are aware, especially adults, that they are providing a lot of information about them through applications, and try to make the publications as private as possible or that the location is not communicated at all times.

To some extent we have been struck by what a thirteen-year-old girl has told us: “Kids are entertained more without a mobile, if it is sport”. The boy takes the floor a younger year: “Well, some stay at home on weekends. He asks why it will not come out and tells him that he has to do homework. ‘What you’re saying, because we don’t have work at home.’ He wants to spend eight hours with his phone.”

Young people, to some extent, relate the use of mobiles with other types of stimulus. “In the colonies we spent fifteen days without a mobile phone and we didn’t miss it,” the 15-year-old girls tell us. “Of course, none of us had, and also all were different. Here everyone is the same, we get bored and it's OK to disconnect. When we leave the play, for example, we almost ignore the phone, if you have something else to entertain you don’t need it, but if you are bored...”