Every morning, thousands of influencers wake up, grab their phones, and perform the same ritual: filming themselves looking somehow both ethereal and relatable while going through a morning routine that would require most of us to wake up at 4 AM.
You know the ones. They start with meditation as golden light streams through linen curtains. They drink celery juice. They journal. They do a full skincare routine with products that cost more than your electricity bill. They make a smoothie with seventeen ingredients. They do yoga. And somehow, they still have time to work a full day.
But here’s what they’re not telling you: that effortless morning glow costs a fortune, both in money and in the time it takes to create the illusion that it doesn’t.
The Math Nobody Shows You
Let’s break down a typical influencer morning routine that claims to be “simple” and “easy to incorporate into any lifestyle.” We’ll use a composite based on what’s actually trending right now.
The routine starts with a 5 AM wake-up, immediately followed by a glass of room-temperature lemon water. Then comes meditation—usually using a premium app subscription that costs around $70 a year. Next is the skincare routine: a gentle cleanser, vitamin C serum, hyaluronic acid, eye cream, moisturizer, and SPF. If we’re being conservative with product choices, that’s easily $200-300 for a three-month supply.
Then comes the morning beverage situation. Maybe it’s a matcha latte made with ceremonial-grade matcha powder (around $40 per container), oat milk from the brand everyone likes, and adaptogens that cost $50 for a month’s supply. Or it’s a smoothie requiring organic frozen fruit, plant-based protein powder, collagen supplements, and whatever superfood is trending this week. Budget another $150-200 monthly just for morning drink ingredients.
After that, there’s movement—usually yoga on a premium mat, wearing matching athletic wear from boutique brands. The workout outfit alone costs $150-200, and if you’re following along with classes, that’s another subscription fee.
We haven’t even gotten to breakfast yet, and we’re looking at initial investments of $500-700, plus monthly costs of $200-300 to maintain the routine. And that’s before factoring in the most expensive resource of all: time.
The Time Tax of “Self-Care”
Here’s the thing about these morning routines that nobody wants to admit: they require having your life structured in a way that most people in their twenties simply don’t.
Most of these routines take two to three hours from start to finish. To make that work while still getting eight hours of sleep and arriving at a job by 9 AM, you’d need to wake up by 5 or 5:30 AM. That means being in bed by 9 PM at the latest.
For people in their early twenties, that’s often not realistic. Maybe you’re working a service job that ends at 11 PM. Maybe you’re taking night classes. Maybe you just want to have a social life that doesn’t require leaving the bar by 8:30 PM to maintain your morning routine.
The influencers showcasing these routines often have the flexibility to structure their entire day around content creation. Their morning routine isn’t just self-care—it’s literally their job. They can afford to spend three hours on it because filming and posting that routine is how they make money.
The Privilege Nobody Mentions
There’s an enormous amount of privilege baked into these morning routines that rarely gets acknowledged. First, there’s the obvious financial privilege of being able to afford hundreds of dollars in wellness products and subscriptions. But beyond that, there’s the privilege of time, space, and circumstances.
These routines assume you have a kitchen to yourself where you can make elaborate smoothies without bothering roommates. They assume you have a quiet, aesthetically pleasing space to meditate. They assume you don’t have kids to get ready for school, or family members to care for, or a partner whose schedule you need to coordinate with.
They also assume you have the mental health stability to maintain a complex routine. For people dealing with depression, anxiety, or ADHD, even getting out of bed can be a victory. Watching someone breeze through a ten-step routine before 7 AM can feel less like inspiration and more like a reminder of everything you’re failing at.
When Wellness Becomes Another Job
The darker side of influencer morning routines is how they’ve transformed self-care into productivity. These routines aren’t just about feeling good—they’re about optimization, efficiency, and getting the most out of yourself before you even start your actual day.
This shifts the entire meaning of a morning routine. Instead of being a gentle way to ease into your day, it becomes another set of tasks to complete, another way to measure whether you’re doing life “right.” Miss your 5 AM alarm? You’ve already failed before your day began.
For young people who are already juggling work, education, relationships, and trying to figure out who they are, adding a two-hour morning routine to the list of things they should be doing creates another source of stress rather than relieving it.
The Algorithm’s Role in Aspiration
Morning routine videos perform incredibly well on social media because they tap into something we all want: control. If we could just nail our morning, maybe the rest of the day would fall into place. Maybe we’d be more focused, more productive, more successful, more… together.
The algorithm knows this and feeds us more of what we engage with. One morning routine video leads to another, and suddenly your entire feed is people who seem to have life figured out before 8 AM. It’s easy to forget that what you’re seeing is curated content, not reality.
These videos are edited. They’re filmed on good skin days. They’re shot in the best lighting. The person filming has probably tried on three different outfits to find the one that looks “effortlessly” cute. What looks like a relaxed morning is often a carefully produced performance.
What Actually Works for Normal Humans
So what’s a realistic morning routine for someone in their twenties who doesn’t have an influencer budget or schedule?
The truth is, it’s probably much simpler than what you’re seeing online. Maybe it’s just washing your face, drinking some water, and eating something before you leave the house. Maybe it’s a five-minute meditation instead of thirty. Maybe it’s playing music you like while you get ready instead of sitting in stressed silence.
The goal of a morning routine shouldn’t be to transform yourself into a different person. It should be to help you feel slightly more prepared to face your day. That might look nothing like what’s trending on TikTok, and that’s completely fine.
Creating Your Own Version
If you want to build a morning routine that actually serves you rather than stresses you out, start by being honest about your constraints. How much time do you actually have? What’s your budget? What are you trying to achieve?
Maybe you can’t afford a $50 face serum, but a $12 drugstore moisturizer with SPF does the same basic job. Maybe you can’t meditate for twenty minutes, but you can spend two minutes doing some deep breathing while your coffee brews. Maybe you can’t make an elaborate smoothie, but you can grab a banana and call it breakfast.
The most sustainable routine is the one you’ll actually do, not the one that looks best on camera. If your morning routine is causing more stress than it’s relieving, it’s not serving its purpose.
The Bottom Line
Influencer morning routines sell us a fantasy: that if we just had the right products, the right schedule, the right discipline, we could look like that, feel like that, be like that. But the truth is more complicated.
Those routines work for influencers because they’re the job, not something done before the job. They’re funded by sponsorships and ad revenue. They’re performed for an audience. They’re not meant to be realistic for people living regular lives.
There’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from what you see online, but it’s worth remembering that you’re seeing a highlight reel, not a documentary. The effortless morning routine took effort to create, money to fund, and time to film and edit.
Your actual morning—whether it’s rushed and chaotic or slow and peaceful—doesn’t need to look like content. It just needs to get you through your day feeling relatively human. Sometimes that means a elaborate skincare routine. Sometimes that means dry shampoo and coffee in a travel mug. Both are valid.
The real secret that nobody wants to tell you? The people with the most impressive morning routines are often the same people who feel pressure to perform every aspect of their lives. Maybe the most radical thing you can do is have a boring morning routine that nobody wants to watch—and be completely okay with that.