Tyler McClure
Professor Hagood
LWP 2001
6 December 2023
Desk Diaries
It was Emily’s first day of her Sophomore year in College. Her resolution for the new semester was to stop procrastinating; a bad habit that caused her more stress than completing the actual assignment. Emily had gotten by in school for the last year by completing everything at the last minute, she’d even convinced herself that she produced better quality work doing so. But Emily knew it was unhealthy to let the habit continue, it was more stressful on her brain and body over time, especially with all-nighters. Staying up all night negatively impacts her sleep schedule and her ability to remember important things. Even though Emily knows procrastinating is bad, she still does it sometimes. Staying motivated is so hard when the work is so boring; there are hundreds of things more entertaining than annotating strange short stories from her Literature courses.
Emily sat in bed after her only class on Monday which ended at noon. It was currently 1:30 pm, she had a ten-page essay due in two days and had not so much as glimpsed at the essay prompt. She felt this sense of doom come over her, a feeling she knew all too well. In a burst of inspiration, her fingers typed into the YouTube search bar of her iPad that her parents bought for college, which she so far has only used to watch Netflix. “How To Complete A Ten Page Essay in 10 hours.” her fingers danced on the touch screen. The first video suggested was titled “I waited til the night before to write a 20 page research paper.” Emily selected the video immediately. While watching the video, a wave of energy washed over her, “This is so much like me,” she said as the blue light from the screen mesmerized her. It was like she’d made a new friend, someone that she could relate to. The video eventually finished, and Emily had a new lightness about herself. On the sidebar of the screen, there was a suggested video by another creator titled “Study With Me | 2 Hour Pomodoro Technique”, she clicked on the video. The video featured a female student around Emily’s age sitting at a desk with a notebook and a laptop. The video had not played for more than a full minute when Emily felt this sense of urgency hit her in the stomach. Emily rolled out of bed and pulled out her dead laptop from her school bag, ran over to her desk, plugged in the charger ridden of exposed wire, and got to research quickly. As with any person with a short attention span, Emily got distracted and started online shopping. She heard a quick whip of paper come from her iPad speaker followed by the clacking of a keyboard. Emily felt embarrassed, exited out of the Amazon browser, and returned to typing on her essay document. She continued this for about thirty minutes until she heard a timer go off. Her head turned back to her iPad and saw that the video had a five-minute timer on it - the student was gone; she was on a study break. Emily took that as her sign to stop slouching over her laptop and get water. Before she knew it, the student in the video was back, and she and Emily went back to typing. Eventually, the 2-hour video was over, Emily had found two of her required sources and had 1.5 pages completed - only 8.5 more to go. Emily sat back in her desk chair amazed. Numbers started running through her head. “I have 8.5 pages left to finish. If I complete 2 pages for every two-hour video, I can have this done a full day before the due date and get a full night’s sleep.” Emily was elated, she felt that she had solved her procrastination problem with her newfound virtual study buddy. However, Emily couldn’t help but wonder if this feeling would last for the rest of the semester.
What Is the Study With Me Trend?
Originating in South Korea as a form of Live Broadcasting entertainment “Gong Bang” (in English “Study With Me”) features content creators studying in cafes, in libraries, or at their desks for hours at a time. This seems like such a boring trend, but many live broadcasters started filming “Study with Me” videos because they realized studying was a huge part of a college student’s life and it provided a way for students to engage in relatable entertainment. The trend also has a huge impact in terms of glamorizing something considered boring, “Study with me videos occupy a niche corner of the internet that blurs the lines between entertainment and the ultra-mundane.” (Ewe). These broadcasters have turned one of the most boring aspects of college life into a form of pleasure, it is so successful that Apple has started to release Study With Me videos featuring actresses like Storm Reid.
In addition to live broadcasted videos or pre-recorded study sessions, the study with me trend hosts various other sub-trends that can be found in the world of collegiate lifestyles; things such as college-student vlogs, back-to-school hauls, and other trends that make the scholastic college experience a bit more glamorous. But the study with me trend also bleeds into self-improvement and productivity parts of the internet. The whole point of going to school is to become more intelligent, but that cannot always be done by studying. Self-improvement videos often encourage viewers to get better at something or take control of an aspect of their education so they will gain personal value from working as a student not just receiving a degree. Likewise, productivity videos teach students how to schedule their time, resist the temptations of procrastination, and use mathematical philosophies to explain the effectiveness of certain productivity techniques. All of the sub-trends and variations of the “Study with Me” trend offer a type of goal-setting and potential reward system for students seeking to take control over their education and careers.
The study with me trend and its variants assist in the romanticization of school. What is romanticization? Its definition according to The Britannica Dictionary is “to think about or describe something as being better or more attractive or interesting than it really is” (Romanticize). Often, live broadcasters of the Study with Me trend present themselves in aesthetically pleasing locations feeding the visual parts of viewers' brains. Their desks are decorated to feel very cozy, or very techy, some study in rustic cafes, or cathedral-esque libraries. Seeing someone study in such atmospheres transports viewers into that location, without having to physically plant themselves there, which adds to the perceived glamour of studying. Would you rather study on a grimy couch on your school’s campus or in the New York Public Library? Despite the not-so-pleasant description of a couch, another layer of romanticization can apply to the truly mundane areas of school. If you have been on social media at any point in the past ten years, you’ve probably come across “Day in the Life” vlogs which depict a person doing various things during their day. In the case of Study with Me, you will see students take their cameras along with them to school and see parts of their day at school. These videos are usually visually pleasing and trigger aspects of consumerism by showing viewers what they carry to school or what they wear, but there are a special few of these vlogs that are more realistic. Some “Day in the Life” vlogs feature exhausted students showing you what a realistic day at school is like for them. They wake up, do the bare minimum for an outfit that consists of sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and haul themselves to campus. These vlogs are usually comedic and relatable which makes viewers feel like they belong to a community. The relatable vlogs also lack the element of consumerism that some of the more glamorous college vlogs do; daily coffee runs, multiple Apple devices, and over-priced water tumblers. There is truly something for everyone in terms of appeal within the world of “Study with Me”.
Outside of visual appeal and romanticization, the “Study with Me” trend has an effect on the brain of someone who consumes such content. Watching someone else study emulates a method called “body-doubling” where one studies next to another person in order to keep themselves on task. It basically makes you feel embarrassed that you are not working like the other person, so you feel more motivated to work. This aspect of the trend became more widely acknowledged during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, according to Kim Dong-min a Study with Me creator, “ ‘Because of the coronavirus, most people around the world are studying alone at home. I think my video tells them that [they] are not alone,’ Kim said.” (qtd. in Ewe). Students all over the world were stuck at home and often felt lonely while having to study away from campus. Study with me searches peaked during lockdown because students needed other ways to push themselves to get work done. Watching the live streams also imitates having a real person next to you, with real pages flipping and keyboards clacking.
Some of the more psychological aspects of the trend involve a method psychologists call “cognitive restructuring” which replaces negative thoughts with more positive thoughts (Examples of Cognitive Restructuring). When students associate studying with something entertaining, this technique is achieved which then further motivates a student to tackle their assignments rather than procrastinate. Another psychological method called “the placebo effect” can be used alongside the “Study with Me” trend. A placebo is a simulation of therapy, it makes you feel like you have been healed or able to cope with whatever ailment you currently suffer. If you apply the placebo effect to procrastination, the placebo is a “Study with Me” video and the effect is the motivation that comes from it.
Many people need coping mechanisms throughout life, sometimes to aid in anxiety or depression, “Coping mechanisms are strategies that help people deal with stress and uncomfortable emotions,”(Bailey). College students often experience anxiety and depression frequently during the academic school year, causing them to stress more. A form of depression that students often experience but are not able to identify is seasonal depression, also known as Season Affective Disorder (S.A.D). “In most cases, SAD symptoms start in the late fall or early winter and go away during the spring and summer, known as winter-pattern SAD or winter depression” (Seasonal Affective Disorder). This form of depression starts when the days become shorter which causes people who suffer from S.A.D to feel like they are out of time and losing a race against life, which results in a lack of inspiration or energy to do anything. People who watch “Study With Me” videos while doing their work use the trend as a coping mechanism sometimes without realizing it because it is inspiring - a much-needed feeling for students who suffer from seasonal affective disorder. With the psychological reasons behind the trend, the aesthetic reasons, and the consumeristic reasons, the “Study With Me” trend has impacted a niche corner of the internet and has proven to be a trend that motivates students and eases the intense feelings of anxiety and depression that college students may experience.
The “Study with Me” trend is a positive trend in theory, but there are negative aspects to the trend. Toxic Productivity is an issue produced by the “Study with Me” trend, where one feels they need to be productive at every waking moment. A person who may deal with this feels like everything they do needs to contribute to their education or career, so they will compensate by working longer hours or studying for prolonged periods. An example of this can be found where “Study with Me” creators will study for twelve hours with very few breaks in between. Students who feel like they are not doing enough work or getting the best grades could see these videos and put unhealthy amounts of pressure on themselves resulting in even more stress, anxiety, and depression. Watching “Study with Me” videos as a coping mechanism should only help you through the issue, not solve it. Like any coping mechanism, if you rely on it too much or become fully dependent on it, can produce the opposite effect, and take you further away from your goal.
In more recent years, there has been a cultural conversation around romanticization and how a person could incorporate it into their life. Sometimes by doing small things like buying matching pajamas, or buying a cute mug to sip on a morning coffee, romanticization happens when you take pleasure in the simplest things. The Study with Me trend takes that concept and turns it into something more drastic by making a dreadful activity a charming one. One could say the Study with Me trend is just another useless form of content that younger generations consume because they crave constant stimuli, but the trend is far from that. Studying takes up a majority of a student's life, and that majority can often be the most stressful and anxiety-inducing. So why not try to make it just a bit more inviting? This trend is arguably one of the more fruitful and positive trends that have dominated the feeds of the digital generation. But at the same time, it is a reminder to not let anything consume your life, because with all the good it can bring there is potential for it to be destructive.
References
Bailey, Aubrey. “Coping Mechanisms: Everything You Need to Know.” Verywell Health, Verywell Health, 18 Oct. 2022, www.verywellhealth.com/coping-mechanisms-5272135.
Ewe, Koh. “Why Are ‘Study with Me’ Videos so Popular?” Why Are “Study With Me” Videos So Popular?, 16 Feb. 2021, www.vice.com/en/article/wx8yb9/study-with-me-gongbang-youtube-video-trend-asmr.
“Examples of Cognitive Restructuring.” Concordia University, 4 Mar. 2020, www.concordia.ca/cunews/offices/provost/health/topics/stress-management/cognitive-restructuring-examples.html.
“Romanticize.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., www.britannica.com/dictionary/romanticize. Accessed 6 Dec. 2023.
“Seasonal Affective Disorder.” National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/seasonal-affective-disorder. Accessed 5 Dec. 2023.