Social
5 reviews
Whatever else these five do, they decide what you see next. Facebook and Instagram are covered on how much control over that decision you still hold. TikTok gets its page for how quickly the ranking reads you and how hard it is to put the phone down. Reddit is a thousand rooms with a thousand sets of rules, and BeReal was built to be the opposite of everything above it. One thing runs through all five reviews: what the app does when you stop paying attention to it.
Social Facebook
Social Instagram
Social
TikTok - Videos, Shop & LIVE
Social Reddit
Social
BeReal. Your friends for real.
Verdicts at a glance
- Facebook 8.9/10 Still the best tool for groups and local events, but the main feed has become so recommendation-heavy that its core promise of staying connected with your network now takes active effort to fulfil.
- Instagram 8.4/10 A powerful distribution platform for creators who work with Reels, but as a tool for following people you actually know, it requires constant effort to fight the algorithm back toward your actual network.
- TikTok - Videos, Shop & LIVE 7.8/10 The most algorithmically sophisticated short-video platform, which is both what makes it addictive and the most honest reason to be cautious about using it without limits.
- Reddit 6.5/10 Adequate for casual Reddit browsing but still a notch below the best third-party experiences the platform effectively killed off.
- BeReal. Your friends for real. 6.5/10 A clever and honest social format that works well when your friends are using it and becomes an empty app when they are not.