Travel & Instagram

Traveling over the past 18 months, I’ve been struck by how drastically social media (in particular Instagram) has reshaped travel culture over the past few years. This has been for better and for worse. Five particular ways in which this has happened come to mind.

1. Thorough Instagram, more people have become aware of more places. This has contributed to a spike in travel over the past decade. While there are considerable consequences of travel (anthropological, environmental, economic), I believe- for reasons discussed in my last blog post- that travel is in aggregate a good thing. It fosters growth and unity by exposing people to cultures and values dissimilar to their own.
2. “Instagramable” locations have been hit particularly hard by this rise in travel. From my travels, two places in particular come to mind. Horseshoe Bend in Page, AZ and Chefchaouen, Morocco. In the latter I found myself walking around, watching old local women forced to push through crowds of tourists who were incessantly photographing each of the city’s beautiful blue houses and streets. Pictures on Instagram are what brought many of these tourists to Chefchaouen. Pictures on Instagram are what brought us to Chefchaoen. I couldn’t help but think about how much these Moroccan womens’ lives have been changed by this app from San Francisco.
3. More times than I can count, I have connected with existing friends in distant places after learning of each others’ travels through Instagram. It’s always fun to see familiar people in unfamiliar places. Instagram enables this to happen more often than would otherwise be possible.
4. Instagram has created (sometimes false) expectations for travelers of what certain places are going to look and feel like. Take, for example, the Gates of Heaven in Bali (shown in the accompanying photo of this blog post). Beautiful! Until you arrive and discover that to stand between the gates you must take a number (like at the deli), wait for two hours, and pay a local to take a photo of you there. Moreover, the apparent pool of water in front of these gates is in fact not a pool at all but rather the reflection of a mirror that this photographer holds beneath your phone while taking the shot. This is, of course, an extreme example, but an element of this phenomena exists in most places.
5. While traveling, social media allows you to stay in touch with friends and family in a way that was not previously possible. It makes the physical distance between loved ones feel much less significant.

In what ways have you noticed social media reshape travel?

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