The Datamaxxing trend that’s stealing our kids’ childhoods. He’s sixteen. And he already feels like he’s failing.
It’s no secret that I’m an avid Steinbeck fan. I’ve written about the concept of Timshel from East of Eden which reminds us that every day our kids have the opportunity to choose how their life will play out. Their future is shaped by Timshel (Thou Mayest), make good or bad choices. You can read that article here.
But today I am reflecting on another favorite quote from East of Eden:
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
For me, this simple phrase removes so much anxiety from my life. Being good enough makes me content. I can rest easy because I’m good enough. I know I’m not perfect, but I’m good. And that affirmation is freeing. It’s the philosophy I work to instill in my kids:
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
Last night my son and I were sitting at the kitchen table. I was having my usual pre-bedtime snack, a glass of whole milk (lots of fat), and a handful of extra chunky chocolate chip cookies (even more fat). My son sat across from me, staring at his phone studying one of many wellness apps he has installed.
”Damn,” he muttered. “Active score: 84. Recovery: Adequate.” A little ring, slowly closing.
“What does that mean?” I asked, fishing a piece of broken cookie out of my milk glass.
“It’s one of my stats,” he grunted back “I track my HRV (Heart Rate Variability), Vo2 max (oxygen intake), body fat index, PSL score.”
“PSL score?” I asked.
“It’s a score that provides a 0-to-8 facial attractiveness rating system measuring symmetry, proportions, facial width-to-height ratio, and facial harmony. “
“Huh?”
“The guys are also tracking their Canthal tilt. This is the angle of the eye corners from the inner to the outer. A positive (upward) tilt is considered universally associated with more attractive, youthful eyes. Negative canthal tilt is described as one of the most impactful detractors from a PSL score. They’re photographing their own eyes and measuring the angle in degrees”
He’s sixteen.
“WTF?” I thought to myself. This is what brings Steinbeck’s quote to my mind.
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
Why don’t our kids think they are good enough? Why are they chasing these non-scientific completely made-up stats that supposedly define perfection? The problem is that they’re chasing a social media fabricated ideal that is impossible to achieve. Perfect facial symmetry doesn’t exist in nature. A perfect sleep score is a moving target.
Chasing this social media bullshit like this will always leave them feeling like they are lacking. They are never good enough.
As we sat at the table, my son continued to check his stats. He switched to his daily macro count for the day. I saw the frustration growing on his face.
“I shouldn’t have had that slice of pizza with the guys,” he laments. “It’s going to take me two days to get back in balance.”
He’s sixteen.
My son is part of a generation of young men who are adopting the life philosophy: if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t count, and if you’re not measuring it, you’re falling behind. Our kids are being consumed by maximizing every single facet of their lives. And this goes far beyond grades, AP classes, and resume building for college applications. This takes over every facet of their lives.
Looksmaxing, Gymmaxxing, Rucking, 75 Hard, Supplement stacking, Monk Mode, NoFap and detoxing. These are the keywords of their wellness regimen.
I don’t have an official name for trend, so for the purposes of this piece I’m calling it datamaxxing. It’s a compulsive tracking of every available metric about your life; sleep, diet, macros, steps, heart rate variability, calories, screen time, focus, mood. Even masturbation and sex cycles are tracked and hacked.
He’s sixteen.
Every form of maxxing is combined with rigid discipline and scheduling all in pursuit of personal maximum efficiency. This isn’t a trendy vibe; it’s a measurable shift in how young people perceive their own bodies, wellness, mental health, and time. And that perception is always short of an ever-moving goal.
Maxxing has grown beyond a social media trend. It’s become a big business. Roughly 46% of people now own a dedicated wearable device, and 57% own at least one connected health device of some kind. Smartwatches alone hit nearly 563 million users worldwide. Smart rings, which exist for almost no purpose other than quietly logging your biometrics overnight, are the fastest-growing category in the entire wearables market, and the research shows the overwhelming majority of people who buy one do it specifically to obsess over their sleep data.
Let’s look at some of the maxxing genres:
Looksmaxxing:
Looksmaxing is focusing on maximizing physical attractiveness. There are two approaches:
Softmaxxing:
The use of everyday grooming and skin care.
It’s a grift. The promise is that if you use the products the famous social
media looksmaxing influencer uses, you too will be good looking. EVERY
Looksmaxxer influencer is selling some of these bullshit products on the
Tik Tok shop
Hardmaxxing:
This involves extreme permanent measures like steroids use and
cosmetic surgery. Finasteride is one of the most requested prescription
drugs used to maximize hair growth. Influencers also promote surgery to
pin you ears back, rhinoplasty and cheek implants.
He’s sixteen.
Gymmaxxing:
This includes tracking every lift, progression overload, and protein to the gram. There is no rest. If you are not progressing, you are failing.
This is dangerous because it ignores the very basics of healthy weightlifting; Proper Form, Progressive Load, De-loading and Rest.
75 Hard:
75 consecutive days of two workouts per day; one workout must be outdoors. An unforgiving diet, consumption of one gallon of water per day, reading 10 pages of non-fiction per day, daily progress photos, zero rest days. Zero cheat days. If you miss one day, you must start over at day one. This trend has over 1.3 billion views on Tik Tok.
This isn’t discipline or dedication; it’s dangerous.
NoFap:
This is abstaining from masturbation for an extended period of time. The idea is to build self-discipline and self-control. But it’s dangerous. It cements a very dangerous and rigid psychological mindset around sexuality and intimacy, the very things that make us human. Seriously, is an adolescent practicing NoFap going to have a healthy intimate sexual relationship with a partner if their phone apps aren’t in synch? This is a pure gateway to the incel movement.
It’s not tracking that concerns me. Knowing your resting heart rate isn’t a problem. But, pushing through pain, not adjusting your training load, ignoring your body’s signals that it needs rest is dangerous, physically and mentally. Go back to the example of my son. He is experiencing anxiety because he ate a piece of pizza with his friends on Friday night.
He’s sixteen.
He should be experiencing the moment and not worrying about the next day’s consequences. He should be eating the pizza. He should be out with his friends. He should be out there connecting, having tough conversations, laughing, sneaking kisses with his crush behind the football stadium, driving too fast, and jerking off whenever he feels like it, not when his app gives him permission.
I have a problem with maxxing when the information becomes a set of handcuffs in the name of the pursuit of perfection.
Son, I’ve got news for you; perfection doesn’t exist. And I have more news for you. What you did today was good enough. Feel good about what you did. It’s ok to sit back and enjoy where you are.
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
We need to free our kids from the grip of data as the rule set of their lives. The pursuit of perfection is the gateway to a mental health crisis. Researchers keep issuing the same warning: people who obsess over smartphone sleep trackers can develop genuine anxiety about falling asleep, the tool meant to fix the problem becomes the problem.
A University of Toronto researcher who specializes in eating disorders has gone further, describing how the “maxxing” community creates a kind of tunnel vision in young men, where they internalize an impossible standard and the compulsive measuring and mirror-checking starts to resemble body dysmorphic disorder.
They feel like shit about themselves, when in reality they are doing great. Kids are trying to maximize their output, their usefulness, their ability to be a high-capacity player in an endless hustle culture. But they are missing something.
They’re not developing their happiness, their contentment, pride in their progress, their curiosity, their sense of wonder. Because the data can’t track that. Once they start datamaxxing they stop asking “Did I enjoy that?” and start asking “Did that move the number?”
The lesson I’m trying to teach my kids is that a life constrained by only measurable output has no room left for the unmeasurable stuff: the deep conversations, the human connection, the recharging nap you didn’t schedule (but your body is screaming for), the decision to stay at the bonfire an extra hour even though it’ll wreck tomorrow’s sleep score, the slice of pizza with friends. Spontaneity, and the joy that comes with it, can’t be optimized. The moment you’re tracking whether a spontaneous choice was “worth it,” it stops being spontaneous. It becomes another data point feeding the system.
I don’t think this is a coincidence that this is showing up in young men. A lot of the cultural pressure on this generation of guys is about proving usefulness in a world that feels increasingly uncertain, a brutal entry-level job market, an economy that doesn’t reward loyalty the way it did for previous generations. There is no such thing as a job for life anymore. There is constant pressure that they need every possible edge just to keep up.
I don’t want to take the tech away from him. He genuinely trains smarter than I ever did, and some of this is just good information used well. What I’m watching for instead is whether the data starts running him, instead of the other way around, whether a bad sleep score becomes a reason to cancel plans with friends, whether a missed step-count goal turns into a bad mood at dinner, whether “I should rest” starts meaning “the app told me to” instead of “my body told me to.”
I tell him that some of the best moments of my life will never show up on a dashboard. They weren’t efficient. They didn’t optimize anything. A spontaneous road trip, taking the long way home because the scenery is better, having a second beer with coworkers after work, skinny dipping at midnight in Olympic National Park, engaging in a conversation that runs two hours long, staying up late at a campout because the conversation around the fire was connecting and engaging, that slice of pizza with friends. None of those “maxxes” anything. All of it mattered because the results were things that can’t be measured: connection, joy, curiosity, empathy, wonder.
If there’s one thing I want him to walk away with, it’s not “don’t track your data.” It’s the number on the screen is information, not instruction. You’re allowed to override it. You’re allowed to stay out late, eat the thing, skip the workout, follow the dumb idea, just because it’s a good night and you only get so many of those. The data can tell you how you slept. It can’t tell you whether the night before was worth it. That’s still your call to make, and it always will be, no matter how good the algorithm gets.
I finished my whole milk (not almond milk), kissed my son goodnight and went to bed. In the morning I was very happy to see that there were two less cookies on the plate than night before.
