The art of pretending to have your life together: debunking student influencers

Student influencers. We all know the ones – or, depending on the day, might even be one ourselves. They materialise on our Instagram explore page at our most vulnerable moments. An endless carousel of Strava screenshots, library timelapses, and aesthetically pleasing coffee cups dominates a once perfectly curated, relatable feed – turning what was intended as a ‘quick’ procrastinatory scroll into a surprisingly reflective experience (a doomscroll). Before we know it, we’re mentally renegotiating our own habits. Perhaps we should keep a journal more often, restrict our screentime more, or even download the Runna app? Maybe opening a fresh ChatGPT tab isn’t the best preparation for a seminar…

Seeing this ‘idyllic’ portrayal plastered across social media can make it incredibly easy to compare your own perfectly normal, slightly dishevelled chaos with someone else’s curated calm

Watching it all unfold can sometimes feel as if they’ve unlocked an inaccessible, squeaky-clean version of student life that the rest of us just can’t.

Though we’re all probably guilty of taking a ‘productive’ study photo – a fourth-floor library sunset paired beautifully with a framed split-screen of a Word document & Moodle, we can’t ignore the cropped out empty Red Bull cans and the 47-minute Spotify deliberation… It’s worth saying that this picture-perfect student lifestyle can perhaps, at times, be a little unkind. Seeing this ‘idyllic’ portrayal plastered across social media can make it incredibly easy to compare your own perfectly normal, slightly dishevelled chaos with someone else’s curated calm.

Here’s the thing: what we see online is rarely the full picture. In real life, student influencers panic about deadlines, accidentally sleep in, and cry over footnotes – just like everyone else. And, although it seems they have mastered the timeless art of pretending to have their life together, they’re just as chaotic and human as the rest of us.

Take one of my friends, for example. They have a large online following as a student productivity creator and recently posted a ‘Lazy Sunday’ reel. In it, they drifted seamlessly from a casual 6 am spin-class to a trip to campus for a 10-hour revision session; squeezed in a meal with a friend; a half-marathon; completed all of their washing and pre-reading; meal prepped for the week; and – perhaps most impressively – changed their bed sheets. A ‘Lazy Sunday’, am I right? I don’t know about you, but the mere act of changing bed sheets often requires scheduling, emotional preparation, and a recovery period. And yet, as lovely as they are (and as both impressive and overstimulating as this day looked), they later admitted that the Sunday in question was actually spent hungover in bed, head in a bin. The reel itself was curated gradually over the span of a couple of weeks – not a lie, but certainly not the full truth.

I’ll be sold to the fantasy that one day I will actually stick to the routine of waking up at 6 am, making it to the gym, finishing my pre-reading, and still having a phone that’s somewhat charged by the end of the day

And that got me thinking. Are student influencers good for us? Are they all just faking it, or are some genuine? Or are they just participating in the same quiet performance most of us quietly engage in online, only with a slightly bigger audience? And if they are, should we want to know?

On one hand, knowing how curated some of it is can be comforting. It allows us to stop punishing ourselves for waking up later than expected or failing to batch-cook nutritionally dense meals. But on the other hand, there’s something oddly motivating about the slight illusion, or maybe even the relatability of it. Not all student influencers are artificial; some student influencers post genuine content, showing aspects of being a student that are difficult, which can be comforting. And, even when we know it’s perhaps slightly manufactured, it can be reassuring. But for now, hopefully, the more I engage with student influencers, the more I’ll be sold to the fantasy that one day I will actually stick to the routine of waking up at 6 am, making it to the gym, finishing my pre-reading, and still having a phone that’s somewhat charged by the end of the day.

And, maybe that fantasy, handled gently, isn’t such a bad thing after all.