When self-improvement becomes a social norm

You wake up early, work out, and eat “right.” You plan your day, work toward your goals, and try to keep improving. And if there is any time left, you make sure to rest ideally in the “right” way. On social media, the best version of ourselves always seems to be just one step ahead. At first, the message feels positive: you can become better. You can live more healthily, grow professionally, build better habits. But what happens when “you can” slowly starts to sound like “you should”?

Today’s wellness culture extends far beyond fitness and nutrition. On TikTok and Instagram, self-improvement reaches into almost every area of life. Morning routines, productivity hacks, career advice, and relationship content create a constant stream of guidance on how we might live better. In this environment, self-improvement is no longer simply presented as a possibility. Gradually, it becomes a standard for what is seen as normal, desirable, and worth striving for.

A young person scrolling through their phone is not comparing themselves with just one individual. Within minutes, they might see someone with the body they wish they had, someone else with the career they aspire to, and a third person presenting a seemingly perfect relationship. What emerges is a particular form of social comparison. We are not necessarily comparing ourselves with a real person, complete with weaknesses, contradictions, and ordinary moments, but with a digital collage made up of the best features of many different people. One person’s body, another’s career, someone else’s relationship, and a fourth person’s discipline come together to form an ideal self against which the real self can easily feel inadequate.

As clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Elena Spyropoulou explains, constant exposure to the “ideal” lives displayed on social media can significantly affect young people’s self-esteem and self-image. She is careful to point out, however, that social media is not, in itself, the cause of low self-esteem. Rather, they can act as an additional pressure within a broader and more complex set of personal and psychosocial influences. Its impact is not limited to direct comparison with others. Repeated exposure to the same patterns of behavior also matters. When certain images appear again and again in our feeds, they gradually stop looking like selected fragments of someone else’s life and begin to serve as reference points for what is considered “normal.” This is where social comparison meets the power of social norms: what seems to be something “everyone is doing” can easily start to feel like something we should be doing too.

Nutritionist Nikoleta Adamidi identifies the same pressure in the lifestyle promoted on social media. As she notes, repeated exposure to ideals of success and self-improvement can create the feeling that “you should be doing better things for your age” and make it harder to recognize “where we are ourselves.” Food is one of the areas where this pressure becomes especially visible. Clean diets, cheat meals, supplements, and strict routines often associate eating with discipline and self-control, creating an image of the “right” way to eat. In her practice, Nikoleta meets people who have already absorbed such ideas, from warm water with lemon to banning bad carbohydrates, especially at night. When daily nutrition fails to match this idealized image, comparison can become more than a question of food choices. It can turn into a measure of self-worth.

The same logic extends to productivity. The day has to be “used well,” progress has to be measured, and every goal has to lead somewhere. Even mental health is gradually drawn into this framework through concepts such as boundaries, healing, and emotional intelligence. These are valuable ideas, but within a culture of constant self-improvement they risk becoming yet another set of standards for how we are supposed to be. This leads to one of the central paradoxes of wellness culture. Even self-care can become a form of performance. Rest is no longer simply rest, there is a “right” kind of self-care. Walking is not just walking, it can be tracked in steps. Sleep is not just sleep, its quality can be monitored and scored. Self-care, in other words, can stop functioning as a release from pressure and become absorbed into the same logic of measurement and evaluation.

Over time, what begins as an external social standard can become internalized. The pressure moves from the screen into our inner dialogue; Did I exercise enough? Did I eat well? Did I work hard enough? Am I moving forward in my career? Am I doing enough for my mental health? Comparison no longer has to happen while we are looking at a screen. The standards have already become our own.

Productivity is only one part of life, not a measure of personal worth. The problem, then, is not exercise, balanced nutrition, ambition, or caring for our mental health. The crucial question is when these remain personal choices and when they become social expectations that determine whether we feel adequate. Perhaps the greatest challenge for young people is not to stop striving for growth, but to recognize when a goal genuinely belongs to them and when it reflects a standard repeated back to them every day through their screens. In a digital world where there is always a better version of the body, the career, the diet, and even the self, the feeling that we are “enough” becomes increasingly difficult to hold on to.

And perhaps this is the central question left behind by the culture of constant self-improvement; if every aspect of life becomes yet another project to optimize, when exactly are we allowed to simply live it?