Auramaxxing Feels Like A Real Life 'Black Mirror' Episode, and I Hope Our Teens Can Escape It

What’s it like to be young, with your whole life ahead of you? According to a recent trend on TikTok called auramaxxing, consciousness is basically an endless task of scoring yourself and others according to every little thing you do. Every day is about judging and scoring, in a 24-7 attempt to grow “aura points,” a made-up, fluid metric range that can be thought of as The Coolest Person in the World at one end of the spectrum and a shunned, unloved outsider at the other.

When I first learned of this trend (a play on another worrying TikTok trend, looksmaxxing), I first thought, “Oh, it’s just an online expression of time-honored self-obsession (one of the developmental stages of the teen brain)," so nothing to see here. But as I’ve seen the concept ladder up all the way to the presidential campaign, I’m wondering if there’s not something full-on creepy about this whole way of thinking—especially for teens.

Auramaxxing clips are deceptively breezy, with arbitrarily assigned numerical losses and gains. In one TikTok, someone trips so they lose 1,000 aura points. In a second clip, a guy fails to lift a heavy barbell: -5,000 points. In a third, a person walks to the subway with their backpack flapping open, that’s -10,000 points. What’s most upsetting to me is this: I'm a grown-ass woman (and parent to a teen) who cringed through these exact occurrences in my life, before the hive mind had created an arbitrary scoring system that would amplify my embarrassment. So I can only imagine how mortifying this gameified daily existence is now, to today's stressed-out, sensitive teens. I'm fearful that auramaxxing is only going to make young people more self-conscious and inhibited rather than community-focused and outgoing. I don’t want the digital realm to discourage Gen Z from exploring their physical world, lest they trip, drop the barbell or carry an open backpack.

I don’t want the digital realm to discourage Gen Z from exploring their physical world, lest they trip, drop the barbell or carry an open backpack.

In other auramaxxing clips, people are bemoaning their physical shortcomings (non-muscular body = negative points) and admiring perceived physical attributes (strong jawline = positive points). Yikes, looking at these clips made me feel less-than just by exposure to them…no matter that these are largely teens and young adults talking to one another. My reaction vacillated between “this is nonsense” and “I really need to hit the gym more”—again, and this is the internal dialogue from me, a (supposedly mature) mom.

Finally, there are the troubling "personality coach" auramaxxing videos. These advise young men (I didn’t see so much of this in the girls’ TikToks) to increase their aura by not talking—therefore increasing mystery and allure to both friends and potential dates. Encouraging kids to clam up? This is not a great idea. Just look at the stats—the Centers for Disease Control says there’s a rising incidence of teen mental illness, reporting that “in 2021, more than 4 in 10 (42 percent) students felt persistently sad or hopeless and nearly one-third (29 percent) experienced poor mental health.” It's a truism that bottling up your thoughts and feelings isn't a recipe for happiness; you can take my word for it, since I lived with a troubled teen through pandemic isolation.

My own 18-year-old, very-online son just shrugs when I ask him about auramaxxing, saying he doesn’t pay a lot of attention to it. However, I don’t know how candid he’s being with me (see: “don’t talk” advice above) and also, someone is creating and liking content scoring millions of clicks.

It reminds me of the “Nosedive” episode of the dystopian Netflix series Black Mirror, in which actor Bryce Dallas Howard lives in a world where every interaction between people is scored by all participants, and social and economic favors are showered on people with higher scores. Sporting a false smile, she goes on a wild adventure that’s by turns ego-enhancing and deflating, only to wind up stripped of her score and imprisoned when she can’t keep up the false front amid constant frustration.

Maybe it's not all competition and paranoia on social media—after all, this is Brat summer

But there’s a happy-ish ending to “Nosedive.” By the time Howard’s character is stripped of her social media pressure, she and fellow shunned people are able to have full-throated fun joking, albeit savagely, with each other. (And maybe it's not all competition and paranoia on social media—after all, this is Brat summer.)

Overall, my hope for auramaxxing acolytes is that at some point, they’ll be able to put down the handheld devices that document and dictate every perceived shortcoming, and get on with the business of creating value in a life of purpose, with no one keeping score.