The Dictatorship of Well-Being: When Living Requires Following a TikTok Guide 📘

We are currently living in an era with greater access to information than at any other time in human history. Never before have we had so many tools at our fingertips: meditation apps, professionals from various fields sharing free content, and one-minute videos explaining how to be “the best version of ourselves.” In theory, we should be the healthiest and most fulfilled generation of all time.

At first, this movement had a very positive impact. It promoted a healthy lifestyle that focused not only on nutrition but also on the importance of mental health and the value of looking inward to heal. I consumed a lot of that content myself, and in fact, I still hold onto many of those ideas as my philosophy of life.

However, as is the case with almost everything in the digital world, the trend became polarized. Suddenly, our social media feeds were flooded with three or four “personal wellness” accounts sharing the same recipe, the same exercise, the same meditation, or the same list of “red flags” on a particular topic. Not to mention the aesthetics: copied images, identical designs, and texts paraphrased over and over again.

It is a devastating irony that, in our desperate quest for well-being, we have ended up turning everyday life into a never-ending checklist. Existence is no longer an experience but has become a continuous exam in which the jury is made up of millions of strangers behind a screen.

The real problem is that this “digital culture” not only tries to sell us a perfect lifestyle, but has also imposed a strict behavioral algorithm on us: it dictates how we should dress, how we should process our traumas, how we should eat, what we should buy, and how we should interact with others.

Independent judgment has been replaced by imitation and repetition. Social media has conditioned us to live on autopilot. If a famous content creator claims that drinking water at a certain temperature is “the key to happiness,” thousands of people rush to change their habits without questioning whether that actually suits their needs. We're forgetting something basic: every body and every mind is different; what works for a stranger on the internet doesn't necessarily work for all of us.

We’ve become addicted to “magic formulas.” Thinking for ourselves and embracing the discomfort of accepting that life is full of nuances requires an effort that the immediacy of social media has taught us to avoid. It’s easier to follow a trend and fit our lives into a set of rigid rules, even if that means any small deviation feels like a personal failure.

This rigidity becomes even more dangerous when we apply it to human relationships. Real life is full of bad days, setbacks, and differences of opinion that don’t make anyone a villain. However, social media’s filter polarizes everything: you’re either right or wrong, you’re either a “conscious” person or you’re ignorant, you’re either healthy or you’re ruining your life.

By applying unrealistic standards—drawn from 45-second videos—to our real-life relationships, we undermine our ability to connect genuinely. We demand absolute empathy and perfection from others, while judging them with the same cold detachment with which we swipe our fingers across the screen.

At this point, it’s worth asking ourselves: Is this lifestyle really good for us, or are we simply responding to social pressure to fit in?

True well-being isn’t based on a mathematical formula; it isn’t uniform; and it certainly doesn’t fit into a TikTok or Instagram trend. A fulfilling life means accepting messy days, having conversations that don’t follow a self-help script, and building routines tailored to our own reality. Our worth isn’t measured by metrics or by conforming to standards dictated by “influencers.” At the end of the day, life doesn’t need to be put on display to be authentic.

Actualmente, vivimos en la era con mayor acceso a la información en la historia de la humanidad. Nunca antes habíamos tenido tantas herramientas al alcance de un clic: aplicaciones de meditación, profesionales de distintas ramas difundiendo contenido gratuito y videos de un minuto explicándonos cómo ser «nuestra mejor versión». En teoría, deberíamos ser la generación más sana y plena de todos los tiempos.

Al principio, esta movida tuvo un impacto muy positivo. Promovió un estilo de vida saludable que no solo se enfocaba en la alimentación, sino en la importancia de la salud mental y en el valor de ir hacia adentro para sanar. Yo misma consumía bastante de ese contenido y, de hecho, conservo muchas de esas ideas como filosofía de vida.

Sin embargo, como ocurre con casi todo en el mundo digital, la tendencia cayó en la polarización. De pronto, el inicio de nuestras redes sociales se llenó de tres o cuatro cuentas de «bienestar personal» compartiendo la misma receta, el mismo ejercicio, la misma meditación o la misma lista de «red flags» sobre un tema en particular. Ni hablar de la estética: imágenes copiadas, diseños idénticos y textos parafraseados una y otra vez.