by Brielle Diskin
This is the second article in a four-part series entitled “Postcards From the Edge,” as part of our April/May Online Issue.
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Il viaggiatore digitale = The Digital Traveler.
In 1975, my dad went backpacking through Europe with one bag, a notebook and an innocent curiosity for the world. Now, I’m here in 2018 with the same sense of wonder, but in place of his simplicity, I have an iPhone and a suitcase about the size of a baby elephant.
Thinking of my dad hitchhiking through the Italian border into Switzerland, I can begin to understand how traveling has changed over the past 40 years. Maybe it’s the world post-terror, or post-Instagram filters, but I think traveling is not quite as spellbinding as it once was.
For the most part, the yearning to travel was always rooted in the unmitigatedly endless motive of exposing yourself to new places, new people and new cultures. The only thing you were able to show for your travels was what you learned and the souvenirs you may have collected along the way.
In the age of modern technology and social media, traveling has transformed dramatically. Where there were once only stamps on your passport, there are now Instagram story highlights. Somewhere on the island of the forgotten toys lies the lost art of sending postcards, and in its place is posting Instagrams.
When it comes to traveling, social media has surpassed the abilities of most guidebooks or trained travel agents. Everything you need to know about anywhere you want to go is at the tip of your fingers. It is as quick to post an Instagram of a location as it is to buy a ticket online to actually go there.
Google even has a feature that helps you book the cheapest and fastest flights all over the world (I cling to it so much that it’s become my homepage). I don’t think I’ve eaten anywhere in the past couple months without first searching the location on Instagram (seriously). Social media has guided me to some pretty unforgettable food spots and the coolest places I would not have known where to begin to look for.
Although, as grateful as I am for the Instagram explore page or Snapmap hot spots, I’ve struggled with just how much social media has played a part in this experience.
Imagine, you are at the Louvre in Paris—somewhere you have dreamed of visiting your whole life. You’re approaching Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and there it is!, peeking out through the throngs of people vying to get closer, just to take pictures with their smartphones. All gazes are being filtered through screens that act as windows, and it seems no one has seen the piece with solely their eyes.
Now, you’re in Barcelona, enjoying some of Gaudi’s legendary architecture at Park Güell, and you can’t seem to find anywhere to sit on the mosaic benches. There is a line surrounding the picturesque spot with tourists awaiting their iPhone Portrait Mode closeup, and you can’t even get close to the cliff, let alone take a rest.
Now, I am not trying to separate myself from these habits, and definitely won’t attempt to act as if I don’t do the same thing. But lately, the more I post, the more I question if I am living, or just living through a lens.
There have been moments where I physically have to stop myself and those around me and ask us to just be in the present moment.
Looking back, it’s possible I forgot what it felt like to be present.
I’ve been taking courses in mindfulness and meditation practices at my school here, learning about being a present traveler. Author Jon Kabat-Zinn once said, if you are always going back to the past, or running towards the future, you are shrinking the present. The present is a gift and it is not to be rushed through.
A balancing act it becomes, trying to be in the moment while succumbing to the lure of posting on social media. But, when all the traveling starts to stack on top of itself, all of my adventures begin to blur as if drifting into a dream I can’t go back to.
On the other end of the spectrum, social media at times, has served as my dream catcher.
I was so disappointed that traveling within the EU did not get you stamps on your passport, but was uplifted when I realized I could virtually keep a log of my travels for the world to see. My life has become an upbeat Black Mirror episode, where my collection of Instagram story highlights are my stored memories. I could say the same for Snapchat, where, eerily enough, the photo-saving section is literally named Memories.
There’s a double-edged sword in spending your time curating your social profile, as it can become a perpetual loop where you’re stuck looking at everyone else’s: what people are doing, where they’re going, who they’re with, what they’re eating and how they’re documenting it.
Back in my dad’s days of backpacking there was little you could compare yourself to. As humans—specifically Americans—we find ways to feel as if we are never keeping up with the Kardashians, the Obamas or the neighbors enough. Now, through likes and reposts, there is quantifiable proof that someone else is more interesting than you, and traveling does not serve as an escape from that rabbit hole. Falling down the rabbit hole is your entry into a disorienting world that follows its own rules and its own language in which it is nearly impossible to extricate yourself.
Within the abyss of social media is where you will find the myriad of doors that are just begging you to go through them, and tantalizing you to compare yourself to others. In terms of studying abroad, caring about your social media presence presents the same tale (no pun intended). Wherever I went, I couldn’t help but look for how others took stories or posted pictures in the same places. I forced myself to ask the question, who am I really posting this for?
Then, it became a race of who could travel the world in 80 days, the fastest. By the third week, I was overhearing peers in class bragging about their packed weekends, and describing calendars that sounded like Beyoncé world tours. It was a marathon where milestones of likes on our Instagram accounts were the checkpoints.
A traveler’s mind is an attitude of seeing something for the first time, like a baby who thinks you’ve actually disappeared when you leave their sight. In a technological information age, it is hard to see something for the first time, because, if anything, you’ve probably already seen it in a photo. In an effort to get back to the valiant traveler I once aspired to be, it will take finding a path between a reality that is present and a reality that documents the present.