Recent social-psychology bestsellers like Haidt's (2024) The Anxious Generation and Wallace's (2023) Never Enough highlight how digital devices and social media have transformed adolescent experiences, contributing to anxiety through increased social comparison—the human tendency to measure one’s abilities and opinions against perceptions of others (Festinger, 1954). Researchers have documented the deleterious effects of online social comparison, including general negative feelings (Lee, 2014), higher levels of depression (Steers et al., 2014), deteriorated mental health (Jang et al., 2016), less satisfaction with life (Morry et al., 2018), and elevated anxiety (Syed et al., 2023). Within music education, Rinn (2024) found that online social comparison predicts impostor phenomenon among music education undergraduates and in-service choir teachers (2025). Additionally, Nápoles and Rinn (2025) discovered that socially prescribed perfectionism predicts various types of social comparison among K-12 choir teachers, with online upward comparisons often causing feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between online social comparison, social comparison rumination, and academic anxiety among music education undergraduates. Undergraduate music education students from an American research university (N = 81) completed measures of the frequency of online social comparison (COMPD and COMPU; Butzer & Kuiper, 2006), the Social Comparison Rumination Scale (Flett et al., 2024), and the Academic Anxiety Scale (Cassady, 2020). Research questions included: (1) To what extent do undergraduate music education majors experience upward and downward online social comparison, social comparison rumination, and academic anxiety? (2) To what extent do the frequency of online upward comparison, online downward comparison, and social comparison rumination predict academic anxiety among music education undergraduates? A majority of participants (65%) experienced moderate to high academic anxiety and reported more online upward comparison than downward comparison. Social comparison, rumination, and frequency of online upward social comparison were the only significant predictors of academic anxiety and accounted for 44.2% of the variance in academic anxiety scores. Additionally, there was a significant negative correlation between academic anxiety and GPA (r = -.26, p < .01). Results highlight the high academic anxiety among music education students and suggest that the link between social comparison and anxiety identified in adolescents is manifesting in undergraduate music education programs. This research provides insights for music teacher educators working to support undergraduate students. Strategies for addressing academic anxiety and mitigating online social comparison, as well as directions for future research, are presented.