The alarm would go off at 7 am and I would get ready for a day indoors. With a plate of avocado toast and a mason jar of coffee, I would make my way down to the cold, unfinished basement. The month was April 2020 – the world was one month into the pandemic. My junior year was cut off abruptly and honestly, I was glad to not have to wake up at 5 am every day. The beginning of the shutdown led me to hop on Discord with my friends until 3 am and then I would watch TikToks with the sunrise peeking through my window. I would wake up at noon and then repeat the vicious cycle. I would feel groggy, and my eye sockets were so sunken and dark like Tim Burton characters. My body was pleading for sleep and a stable schedule!
I needed a routine that would help me be healthy physically and mentally. I started watching lifestyle youtubers and food TikToks instead of stupid comedy videos – finding inspiration in other people’s routines motivated me to make major improvements. At the time, TikToks of people making avocado toast and whipped coffee in the morning were going viral. I would tell myself to wake up early to make myself a ‘TikTok” breakfast to accompany my Bible reading. In a few days, I started to wake up early to make avocado toast and coffee, take them to the basement where my desk was. The glass desk was next to a bookshelf that was home to my paints, brushes, and scrapbooking supplies. My Bible rested on the middle of my desk. I would put my breakfast on the right side of the desk as I did my daily devotions. The quiet, early mornings consisted of me spending hours reading the New Testament and journaling my prayers with my TikTok breakfast never failing. As I look back to the beginning of the pandemic and what was trending on TikTok at the time, was avocado toast just a TikTok trend or was it an integral part to other’s routines during the pandemic?
Improvement TikToks were viral at the beginning of the pandemic. The creators showed off their early morning routines and how they stayed busy during the shutdown. From a college student’s perspective, the TikToks made during the “current stay-at-home orders have created productivity pressure cookers. Social media has been quick to tell us that Shakespeare wrote King Lear while in quarantine, and that we should similarly be taking advantage of our seemingly endless free time. It can be difficult to justify a Netflix binge day while you’re watching other people show off, in real time, how they’re bettering themselves.”
The negative consequence of the TikTok pressure resulted in a good thing for me as it made me want to pursue a healthy and productive life during the shutdown – and I believe that this cause and effect can be seen on a larger scale with Gen Z’s presence on social media. We coped with the traumatic events of the pandemic March 2020 and onward with food, fashion, cleaning, or journaling, as those were viral video topics at the time. I got into playing around with my style and started to use my sewing machine to try to tailor some old dresses from TikTok videos I saw. I was so awfully unsuccessful that I broke my sewing machine, but at least I tried!
TikTok and Instagram alike became like a collective recipe book meets visual diary. The media platforms permitted community bonding when it was essentially illegal to do so in-person. The pressure and rules that were enforced onto the younger generations took a toll on their mental health, but these generations are also tech savvy. Through hobbies and openness to vulnerability, TikTok and Instagram fostered a haven for all its users.
And so the avocado trend, which has been ongoing for years, caught my eye. I always liked avocados but seeing the green spread smeared with a fork and sandwiched between slices of bread and a sunny side up egg appeased my taste buds. The breakfast sandwich was also aesthetically pleasing to post on Instagram by accompanying it with a side of strawberries and yogurt. TikTok made the breakfast sandwich viral, and soon enough, even I felt pressured to post a ‘make avocado toast with me’ video with Supalonely by BENEE playing in the background. The upbeat song acted like earplugs to the world of COVID-positive statistics. Soon enough, social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok became safe spaces for young generations to communicate with their friends and to be entertained with the latest trend.
Making avocado toast and the highly adored whipped coffee for breakfast were two of the few things that helped me develop a routine as an attempt to overcome the depressive thoughts and anxiety driven mornings. A study on food security noted that, “recent data reveal that the pandemic is affecting college students’ mental health status, including their stress, anxiety, and depressive thoughts.” Could food rituals help with that anxiety?
My morning routine was therapeutic, reliable, and it motivated me to take care of my body and mind. My days felt incomplete if I did not read my Bible with a warm cup of coffee in hand and my avocado toast to the side of me. At night, anxious thoughts about the future and loss of my youth plagued my mind, but I looked forward to the mornings as a restart to an awful anxiety-fueled night. YouTube was awful since the recommended page was full of COVID related videos which only heightened my anxiety.
When reading on the effects that social media had on Gen Z during the pandemic, Olivia Zarboni from Western University wrote that, “Before going into lockdown, I never really struggled with mental health. Sure, I’d have my ups and downs, but I could always push through it and carry on with a positive attitude. Recently, I’ve struggled the most with finding the motivation to do things that make me happy again. It’s so easy to sit, mindlessly scrolling on TikTok for hours, or binge-watching TV shows and movies on Netflix.”
I related. I felt so ashamed of being on my phone for an average of 15 hours a day. I felt the back of my eyes hurt and I had regular headaches – but what else could I do? YouTube was scary, I was bored of napping, and I felt like my creativity was drying up which hurt my painting journey. I needed a revival to feel joy again – reading and cooking were my joy!
On the topic of viral food trends, Alexis Austin from UT Austin wrote, “I’m guilty of always scrolling through TikTok, and I especially love being on FoodTok where my For You Page is full of new recipes to cook and new desserts to bake.” My sister and I tried to make cookies, lemon bars, cakes, tiramisu, and crème brûlée. I learned how to cook traditional Guatemalan dishes like tamales and caldo de pollo. Seeing cooking be fun and cool on the internet inspired me to keep finding new recipes and techniques to try.
As a global community, we desired control during the initial shutdowns, especially during the first six months. Everything felt chaotic and hopeless – leaving us with limited things to have a say over. A 2020 study conducted on Filipino college and high school students states that 26% of students felt paranoid of contacting the virus, 48% were concerned about their studies being affected, and 62% worried about food and financial resources during the lockdown. From health, school, and survival resources, Gen Z all around the world was faced with death – the death of people, of dreams, and of hope. For the social media community, bonding over at-home crafts and pass-times like cooking was one of the few ways we were able to keep each other going.
Katelyn Dunkin from UCSD wrote about how avocado toast helped her during quarantine, “My advice is to choose a routine in this quarantine and stick to it. For me it has been avocado toast. I look forward to making my avocado toast every single morning, and from there on out my day is very much more scheduled.”
As a society, and especially as young people, trends are we find comfort and meaning in the ever-changing world.