An alarm flashes on a phone screen: it’s 5am. A hand reaches out to turn it off, and then there is a freshly-brewed coffee, a session at the gym, a perfectly balanced lunch. Before midday, the creator has done a workout, attended two lectures, completed their to-do list, and managed to film it all. “Day in the life” videos are everywhere. Whether on Instagram reels, TikTok, or even YouTube shorts, every day I am met with a barrage of content showing the perfectly curated lives of their creators. I see things like: “a day in the life as a busy student”, “a productive day in my life”, or “clean girl morning routine”, where in the course of just a minute, we get a glimpse into a person’s life – or at least the version of it that they want to show us.
These videos can be entertaining, and there is something inherently captivating about watching others live their lives. But they also create the perfect breeding ground for comparison. We watch them while we’re doomscrolling reels, or eating junk food, or procrastinating our essay, and it’s hard not to think: “I should get up earlier”, “I should go to the gym”, or “I’m not revising enough”.
But no one reaches for their camera when they’re exhausted, or eating takeaway in bed. Our mundane days pale in comparison with someone else’s curated highlights – their best moments pulled together under the guise of reality. It’s rare to see an unproductive ‘day in my life’, or videos where their creators seem unmotivated or sad.
The resulting unrealistic standards for productivity are only exacerbated for Oxford students, who, already in an environment characterised by high expectations and academic pressure, have their own version of these videos to compare themselves to: the “day in the life of an Oxford student”. Between lectures, tutorials, societies, and deadlines, it is already easy to feel like we should be doing more, and an endless stream of videos showcasing students at their most productive, busiest, and most motivated can be somewhat disheartening.
There is also a voyeuristic quality, and with it a genuine safety concern to these videos: there is something undeniably fascinating about watching how others live. With the ever-increasing prevalence of technology and surveillance in our lives, the lack of privacy that comes with it is starting to feel progressively more normal. In the past, a desire to see into the personal lives of others would remain just that, but now we can actually do it. And beyond the pressure, and comparison this encourages, it can also cause genuine dangers – sharing every intimate detail of a routine leaves creators vulnerable. What might seem like a harmless clip of a morning walk can make it surprisingly easy for strangers to work out where someone lives, studies, or spends their time.
And then there is the “what I eat in a day” content. There are countless videos online of influencers presenting restrictive or disordered eating as wellness. A perfectly arranged smoothie bowl or low-calorie breakfast is not inherently harmful, but for younger, more impressionable viewers, creating standards of what is and isn’t acceptable to eat can lead to their normalising these unrealistic standards, and the construction of unhealthily obsessive mindsets when it comes to food.
And yet, despite all of this, we continue to watch these videos. They do have an appeal, and that’s why they continue to get so many views: I’ll admit that I myself enjoy this content. It can be as motivating as it is sometimes demoralising, and sometimes, when I’m scrolling TikTok instead of writing an essay, seeing someone else’s eight-hour revision day helps to encourage me.
There is something undeniably fascinating about watching how others live, and the short length of these videos makes them even more addictive. I also wonder if part of their appeal lies in the fantasy that they show to us: we know that it isn’t realistic, that their creators have chosen which parts of their day to leave in, and which to leave out. We know that it isn’t possible to live like this all the time, and yet we continue to watch. We continue to compare our messy bedroom to the perfectly arranged one on our screen, our procrastination to their productivity, and our ordinary days to their highlights.
“Day in the life” content isn’t going to disappear, and nor should it (for the most part) – after all, it is genuinely entertaining. I think that is worth remembering, though, when we see these videos, that the reality they present is not actually as real as it seems, and that a life well-lived is not necessarily the one that makes it onto social media.
