“Come spend the day in the life with me!” “Here’s everything I did today!” These videos are streamed constantly on all of my social media pages as a young woman. I absolutely love seeing what people are doing and how they spend their days, until it’s a day where I just want to be. Sometimes my days are deemed as “aesthetic,” and sometimes they are complete disasters. As a second-year college student, I’m learning that sometimes my days just don’t go according to plan and that’s okay!
We are in the age now where everything is online and right in front of us in a moment’s notice, including our day to day activities. The term “DIML,” or “Day In My Life,” has become a popular trend where people post what they do throughout the day, often including time stamps. It’s a fun way to show their accomplishments, a favorite coffee place, their friends, or fun activities. This trend has been one of my favorites because it gives you a more personal connection with someone online. Sometimes they’re relatable, and sometimes they can be motivational.
However, I think it’s creating a bit of an obsession with making the most out of our 24 hours. We’re all human and none of us are perfect. We don’t need to do a hundred things a day in order to “accomplish” it. It is perfectly normal to spend a couple hours on the couch watching a tv show and eating your favorite snack. That doesn’t make the day wasted.
I love indulging in social media and watching a bunch of people’s DIMLs, but I am starting to notice how much they’ve rewired the way I think about my own time. I wake up in the morning and start to plan out my day and it seems like I’m subconsciously trying to make my entire day as productive as possible. As a college student who also has a part-time job, I am very busy. On the weekends, though, I have a hard time just existing. This is when I realized I need to take a step back.
Although social media is enhancing this need to be productive, I think it is rooted deeper than social media alone. Modern society often uses productivity as a status symbol and a sign of achievement. Think of a workplace, for example. The person who spends their time constantly completing tasks and bustling around the office can be perceived as the most successful or hardworking person in that workplace. That mindset is carrying over into social media, where influencers showcase just how much they accomplish in a single day. As influencers post new content, other people hop in on these trends and ultimately, it becomes a cycle.
I think that DIMLs are a great way to connect with people and see what they’re up to. Especially when it’s a friend that maybe you don’t keep in touch with every day, but still enjoy seeing what’s going on in their lives. Ultimately, I do think that society is obsessed with being productive but it’s not always a bad thing. It keeps us going and motivated in a technology-based world where it’s easy to lose hours of the day mindlessly scrolling. But it is important to take it with a grain of salt. Just because your favorite influencer had the busiest day yesterday and barely had a minute to themselves, doesn’t mean that they didn’t spend the day before just existing.
What matters is remembering that productivity isn’t the only measure of a good day.
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