A Lapse in Entertainment: The new social media app Lapse is not unique and copies other popular social media platforms

“Get this app, it’s blowing up on TikTok.”

I received this text from my friend demanding I join the newly-developed app, Lapse. She gave me zero context but it’s blowing up on TikTok, so it must be good… right?

I clicked on the invite link sent by my friend and was introduced to yet another app trying to poorly replicate the “vintage aesthetic” that every single teenage girl strives to include on their Instagram feed. As I opened the app and set up my account, my suspicion was confirmed — this app isn’t anything special.

Although Lapse — a photo journaling app where the user takes pictures on the app and posts the aesthetically-altered photo to a social media feed later — is captivating teenagers everywhere and jumped to the top of the Apple App Store, according to techcrunch.com and my own observations, there are many flaws with the new app.

First of all, it’s incredibly hard to even access the new platform. Before you can snap your first picture, the app requires the user to send an invite to at least five friends. This invite includes a cringy message saying “this is so cute,” or “love this.”

Personally, when I download an app, I just want to use it. I don’t want to act as an advertising consultant for the Lapse company. It’s extremely tacky that the app makes every user publicize their company to their entire friend group before even using it.

Also, just getting a text from your friend saying “this is cute” with a link to an app attached with no other context is random and honestly frightening, giving the opposite effect of what they intended.

Along with the app’s squirmworthy attempt at being relevant to teenagers these days, it’s essentially a combination of every social media mixed together into one — it doesn’t offer anything new.

To say that Lapse is a new app is a stretch in itself. In six words, Lapse is BeReal and Dispo combined. It includes the social media aspect of BeReal, providing the user with a feed of all of their friends’ “snaps,” but the app is slightly different and uses the basic vintage look that everyone across the world is tired of — so creative!

While Bustle.com calls Lapse a fresh new look on “being real” with social media, I believe that you could do this on any other type of social media — there doesn’t need to be a completely new app for this.

So, is Lapse the next huge app that is circulating the internet? Yes. But is it worth the hype? Absolutely not. Lapse will die out as a microtrend and in five months teens across the country will be asking each other “Hey remember the app Lapse? Yeah I completely forgot about it.”