We are no strangers to staying up at night, toiling away at our mountain of homework from our numerous AP classes or cramming in last-minute studying for tomorrow’s test. Occasionally, our focus may shift to social media, looking for a quick, easy break from our hours of studying. However, the messages we see on Instagram and TikTok might not mitigate our stress but rather amplify and exacerbate it.
Scrolling through TikTok, a new kind of motivation has become more readily available and more common on the social media platform. Photos of people living in poverty or lower-class American neighborhoods are layered under text that typically reads something along the lines of “Are you ready for this?” These videos, though they don’t always state it explicitly, imply that if students don’t continue studying, they will experience a future like the images portrayed.
Despite being classified as “toxic motivation,” the truth is that these videos are far from motivating. Rather, they’re scare tactics that attempt to instill an ill-placed fear of poverty within students. An unhealthy fear for a certain future should not be a motivating factor for students to work hard because it just plays on very extreme possibilities, like homelessness and poverty, that may not come true.
As students living and attending school in Cupertino, we also need to recognize how affluent our community is. With an average household income that is almost six times higher than the national income, we live in a location that allows the majority of us to worry solely about school and our academic futures. Consequently, this also exacerbates our view of failure because our standard of success goes beyond basic financial security. Weaponizing photos of people living different lifestyles and circumstances as a kind of menacing ultimatum forms a classist mentality.
To imply that those who live in lower-income areas or can’t afford the same luxuries we enjoy are experiencing those specific struggles because they didn’t study enough or work hard enough completely diminishes the backgrounds or situations that might have led someone to where they are now. In some areas, minority groups and families simply don’t receive the same support, attention or aid that we do, making it difficult for people to break out of a certain socioeconomic standing. This mentality continues to push stereotypes that say that lower-class people are in some way inferior to those of higher classes.
With the bounty of opportunities available to us in Cupertino comes the need to recognize our privilege — it’s classist and naïve to be influenced into believing that studying constantly is all that’s required to secure one’s spot in a certain socioeconomic class. Poverty is not caused by B’s in school, and the implication that it is or that we will end up there because of a B is narrow-minded.
Apart from enforcing untrue and extreme stereotypes, toxic study motivation often denies students the ability to take breaks and set boundaries. This can be attributed to students feeling guilty for taking a break, especially among MVHS students facing intense academic pressure. This guilt gives students a distorted view that in an environment where competition and academic success define self-worth for some, we attach unrealistic expectations on ourselves to constantly work. It’s typical for us to push aside those feelings of being overwhelmed because we think, “It’ll all work out in the end,” but really, the work it takes to reflect and check our mental health takes a larger toll.
Instead, we need to encourage students to take a step back and rest when necessary, acknowledging that working constantly can be too much sometimes, and taking a break is more than OK. At MVHS, where the Physiology curriculum pushes self-reflection to “Remember, Reflect and Reset” that resting is productive, these reminders need to be enforced more widely to ensure students are looking after themselves and healthily taking breaks. It’s possible to achieve those goals, get into that school and spend time with family and friends while taking breaks for ourselves. We are humans and not machines, and our self-worth shouldn’t be determined by videos in the media that tell us otherwise while diminishing those of a different class. 
With this idea, we need to remember that the way we perceive school is not the same way others do. While it’s great to always strive to do better, we can’t equate that with other’s economic conditions and statuses. Since we are from a more affluent community, we immediately attach hard work to maintain the type of lifestyle we have in Cupertino and may look down on those who don’t have it because they didn’t “work hard enough” — highlighting a blatant ignorance of the privilege we experience. Toxic study motivation TikToks reinforce that idea and restrict us to our bubble. It’s important to acknowledge that working hard will not take you out of poverty. We don’t have to attach our experiences to what we see on social media and remember that at the end of the day, we’re just high schoolers trying to do our best.
