Has social media made sightseeing deeply uncool?
Social media has changed the way we travel and sightsee when on vacation, turning us into people who perform and curate the imagery we post in order to project an aesthetic or version of ourselves.
In April 2024, I visited sunny Barcelona for the first time and was swept away by Antoni Gaudí's surrealist architecture. I'm certain that for a brief moment, sunbathing under the stained glass of the Sagrada Familia, I forgot how to breathe. Later that evening, as I swiped through my iPhone gallery, hearting the photos that were Instagram Story-worthy, something adjacent to shame took over.
As I pored over the pictures from that day, I recalled a friend’s caption on a photo of Gaudi's iconic basilica. Posted as a vacation throwback in the lockdown of 2020, the text read: "I'll never go to mainstream monuments if you let me travel again." Years later, I couldn't be seen this excited about a "mainstream monument" that attracts 5 million visitors a year. So let's discard that post. I loved the nougat shops that lined the exterior of the cathedral but those are such obvious tourist traps so let's unheart that as well.
After 40 minutes of cool-girl scrutiny and cropping, I picked photos of a vintage concept store, a sandwich shop recommended by a friend, and a cactus garden overlooking the beach that few tourists know about. Satisfied, I posted the dump with nonchalant captions and random emojis, desperate for the "where is this", "where are you?!!" replies to flood in. Someone even asked for my itinerary.
Success: I had passed the test for being a non-mainstream tourist. While this status made me feel like a cultural baddie, what did it mean for my relationship to authenticity? In a quest to be perceived (and validated) as the kind of traveller who seeks out "authentic" neighbourhood gems, rather than the touristy hotspots, I lost sight of the real ‘me’ and began performing something inauthentic online. Instead of embodying my truthful lived experience, every story, emoji and caption undergoes a mental checklist of, "do the internet cool girls still use this slang?" or "does this video look nonchalant and aspirational without seeming try-hard?"
"Success: I had passed the test for being a non-mainstream tourist."
My people-pleasing self is so hot and bothered by what others think of me that I can’t seem to differentiate between my feelings and what’s socially accepted. Often this process of elimination can eat away at the fulfilling, possibly mainstream bits of travel, and leave behind an aesthetic — albeit hollow — carcass. Sure, the post might look aesthetically pleasing, but it doesn’t feel great to stray so far from the truth of the experience.
How did this overwhelming need to hyper-curate our holidays become the norm? For starters, Gen Z are taking more trips than any generation before them. Per a 2023 survey, 52 percent of Gen Z adults are frequent travellers, on par already with millennials, taking at least three vacations in a year. Based on Hopper's 2024 travel report, 63 percent of Gen Z in the U.S. indulged in travel in the last 12 months. In comparison, only 48 percent of boomers and 54 percent of Gen X went on vacations. In the midst of global recession when dreams of owning homes and financial stability remain shaky, young people are investing their money in quick trips and experiences. Additionally, the growth of hostel culture and side gig economy have made it easy for people to work remotely and travel on smaller budgets.
As a generation that grew up online, Gen-Z has watched friends and influencers travel the world and take us along on TikTok- and Instagram- friendly hotel tours or things-to-do videos. Even before creator-led recommendations took over, we relied on aspirational travel media – think of the countless Lonely Planet lists charting offbeat travel destinations or TimeOut's knack for finding obscure haunts before anybody else. Such overexposure to content meant that no matter how well travelled you may be, it’s likely that someone on your socials has already been there, done that. This creates an added pressure to distinguish our vacations with unique experiences. (In fact, this quest for hidden gems advocated by social media has gotten so overwhelming over the years that internet-famous places have started banning photos, videos and influencers. Water guns in Barcelona anyone?)
"Now people are more impressed by content in surprising places that they knew nothing about."
"While a subset of young travellers are seeking more remote, off-grid locations they continue to be drawn to the world's most famous cities and sights. The two behaviours co-exist," Jenny Southan, founder of travel trend forecasting agency Globetrender, tells Mashable. "But sightseeing has become a little less cool as everyone can stand in front of the Eiffel Tower, we have become immune to those perfect sunset shots in familiar places. Now people are more impressed by content in surprising places that they knew nothing about."
Simply visiting a new country doesn't provide automatic social media clout, your vacation also has to cut through the noise. "People’s definition of social status is no longer immediately tied to wealth but more sophisticated tokens such as hyper-local knowledge. Individuals aspire to climb the social ladder by showcasing their culturedness and expertise with symbols," shares Zoia Tarasova, analyst and PhD at trend and insights agency Canvas8. "Cultural capital has become synonymous with less conspicuous experiences like having a glass of vermouth in a hipster bar in Rome that only locals know about. As a result, people want to discover more hidden gems that elevate their social status in front of their followers as opposed to posting about the Colosseum or the Vatican."
Discovery is leading the charge when it comes to our choice of holiday destinations. Expedia’s 2024 Travel Report also indicates an upward trend in Gen Z exploring "dupe cities" or "hidden gem destinations" instead of conventional summer getaways – think skipping Santorini for Paros or Lisbon for Palermo. Ashley McGough, product category manager at Intrepid Travel has also witnessed this switch to off-the-beaten-path experiences. "With this change in mind, we reviewed all our trips in the 18-35 age range last year to ensure they were offering authentic activities at the best value. In Peru, we worked closely with a local community to develop a new section of the Quarry Trail which travellers hike as an alternative to the popular Inca Trail. They have the chance to meet locals and see original Inca tombs that have been seen by few tourists," she says, adding that Gen Z love posting about locals whom they can befriend and hear real life stories from. (Even when said locals have no interest in becoming content fodder...)
For instance, Stacy Matthews, a London-based video editor, still travels to big cities, but she exclusively seeks out Airbnb hosts who live in the same place for a share-house experience. This often leads to having home cooked dinners in an attempt to get an authentic taste of the culture or getting recommendations that only locals may have. The 24-year-old recently visited Berlin for the first time and was taken in by the history of the Berlin Wall. "I spent hours at the memorial and did a walking tour through the main sites, it made me really emotional," she says. "But I only posted stories from two experiences: the Falling in Love, Swarovski musical at Friedrichstadt Palast theatre and a really cool listening party that my host took me to. It was for Charli XCX's new album Brat, that's not something everyone can experience when they go to Berlin, you know what I mean?" It is Brat Summer, after all.
On my last evening in Lisbon, I too, avoided the highly recommended (but touristy) TimeOut Market and decided to have dinner at Palacio do Grilo, an exclusive restaurant where the staff double as abstract theatre performers. At the time, I hated the interactive art between courses, I felt uncomfortable by the darkness and eerie sounds, and paid far too much for sad looking food. But in my post-holiday dump, the restaurant and its gimmicks got a shoutout. Of course, lots of people asked about it, as weird as it was in reality, online in a 16:9 box, the space was a conversation starter.
Living in a society has always included a certain level of performance of the self even offline; think about the ratty home clothes you’d never wear when guests are over or the guilty pleasure tv shows you wouldn’t talk to friends about. But as we exist increasingly online, it’s getting hard to know where this performance ends and the real person begins. "Perception is emerging as a big theme in therapy for young people. Now that we frame our experiences through the lens of external presentation, it’s much harder to figure out what we actually want as opposed to how we’d like to appear," explains existential therapist Eloise Skinner. "This puts us at risk of potentially fragmenting our identities. We lose sight of what we actually feel and instead start to view ourselves from an outside perspective, formulating choices that align with that voice."
I feel gravely called out. In a relentless quest to gain aura points through seemingly authentic travel, perhaps we're forgetting how to identify what we actually enjoy. After weeks of lying to the online world about what I loved on my holidays, my memories seemed to be eclipsed by cool girl syndrome as well. Gen Z is so afraid of being seen as 'cringe' that we'd rather workshop how we feel about our experience than come across as cheugy. In fact, this obsession with gaining cultural capital through travel adds so much pressure to share a perfectly curated (but still casual, woke-up-like-this) dump that it holds the potential to undo any relaxation and calm that the vacation brought in the first place. Cheesy as it may be, I should have posted those panoramic videos of Sagrada Familia. Who cares if it’s widely visited, it still took my breath away.