A bottle of Saratoga water, a banana peel, and a bucket of ice water might seem like a bizarre combination, but for influencer Ashton Hall, they’re the foundation of his meticulously crafted morning routine. A routine that starts before 4 a.m. Every. Single. Day. He brushes his teeth and fills his ice bath with Saratoga water, eats a banana before rubbing the peel on his face, and somehow, this is all supposed to be the key to success. All I can ask is…why?
It’s easy to laugh at the extremes, but these kinds of routines flood Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, making them impossible to ignore. One video turns into five, then 10, then suddenly an entire feed of influencers swearing that their 10-step morning routine will change your life. After a while, it’s hard not to wonder: Am I supposed to be doing this too?
Wellness or Obsession?
Wellness culture used to be about balance, and now it’s about optimization. Plus, social media makes it feel like every part of life needs to be tracked, perfected, and controlled. If you’ve ever logged meals on MyFitnessPal, tracked runs on Strava, or used BetterSleep to optimize your rest, you’re part of the 66 percent of Gen Z actively tracking their health.
I am too, and I check my Apple Watch multiple times a day to see how much more I need to do to close my rings and get those 10K steps. The more wellness content dominates social media feeds, the easier it is to believe that not tracking, not measuring, and not optimizing means I’m doing something wrong.
There’s a reason that 60 percent of Gen Z say they prioritize wellness over money, career, or even personal enjoyment. It’s because social media makes “health” feel like something you have to prove.
No Time for Health…Or a Social Life
Social media wellness trends tend to start with small promises. Drink more water. Get more sleep. Walk more. But then, suddenly, it’s not just one thing; it’s a routine. A lifestyle. That lifestyle starts asking for more and more of your time. That’s probably why 48 percent of Gen Z say that time — not motivation — is what keeps them from a “healthy” life.
Because when an app tells you that you need 10K steps, eight hours of sleep, 120g of protein, a three-minute meditation, and a perfectly structured nighttime routine, the question isn’t “Is this making me healthier?” but “When am I supposed to have a life outside of this?”
My friends invite me to dinner, but my calorie tracker says I’m over my limit. They’re heading to a movie and then out for dessert, but I’ve already planned an early morning workout. They’ve stopped asking me to come out as often. I scroll through their Snapchat stories and wonder when I became the friend who’s never there. Wellness trends claim to make you feel better, but what they actually do is make you feel isolated.
So, Should I Give Up on Wellness?
I wake up at 5 a.m. Tuesday through Thursday, and it’s taken a toll on my friendships. I’m fortunate enough to live within walking distance of most of my friends, and my classes and internship are mostly remote. Despite this, my friends still have lives, and they’re usually not free until dinnertime. On nights when I have an early morning ahead, I have to make a choice: Do I hang out with my friends and feel exhausted the next day, or do I start skipping out on social events altogether?
For a while, I pushed through the tiredness, but eventually, it caught up with me, and I couldn’t make it to those late-night karaoke parties and the impromptu Jackbox nights. The longer I went skipping hangouts, the more I saw Snapchat and Instagram stories the next day — proof that life was moving on without me. And suddenly, it felt like I didn’t have friends anymore. Like they might have forgotten about me. All because I chose to wake up at 5 a.m. to work out.
Selling You Loneliness – One Product at a Time
The irony of social media wellness culture is that there’s no finish line. There’s always a new “must-have” product. A new fitness app. A new hack to optimize your morning, your meals, your skin, and your sleep. And when one thing doesn’t work? The solution isn’t to question the system, it’s to buy another. And another. Until suddenly, you’ve spent hundreds of dollars, hours of your life, and maybe even some of your closest friendships on routines that never really made you feel better in the first place
If you’ve been seeing these trends and hearing how much they’ll add to your life and appearance, consider this: loneliness has been found to increase the risk of early death by 32 percent, according to Nature Human Behaviour. That’s a higher risk factor than obesity and nearly as bad as smoking. A quick McDonald’s run with the girls to grab the new Minecraft Happy Meal isn’t going to kill you. I, for one, won’t let social media trends make that happen to me.
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