How Instagrammable is Your Travel?

Hello and happy Tuesday! I have a bit of an unusual post today, but I hope you'll read it and let me know your thoughts! I wanted to share it with you mainly because I do consider Little Tranquility to be somewhat of a travel blog, plus most of my blogger friends are also travel bloggers (and I think most of us are Millennials?). Anyway, I'd love to know what you think about this.

Schofields Insurance, a vacation home insurance company based in the UK, surveyed 1000 Millennials recently and asked them about what sorts of things they consider when booking a vacation. The results were hard to fathom. Here's a snippet from the article:

"A survey of over 1000 UK adults, aged between 18 and 33 has revealed that ‘how Instagrammable the holiday would be’ has been identified as the number one motivator for millennials when they are deciding on theirholiday plans. The concern as to how holiday snaps would appear online proved more of a motivating factor than the opportunities to immerse themselves in the local culture, local sightseeing and even the cost and availability of alcohol. The results in order of popularity were:

• How ‘Instagrammable’ the holiday will be – 40.1%
• Cost/Availability of alcohol – 24%
• Personal development – 22.6%
• Chances to experience the local cuisine – 9.4%
• Opportunities for sightseeing – 3.9%"

Okay, so, according to this survey, a large percentage of Millennials are truly not worrying about the real experience they'll have in a place but instead worrying more about how other people will perceive them experiencing a place.

The thought of this being a real thing was so sad to me, I had to laugh. Is it really true?? Are people really not visiting a place unless they feel they'll be able to get a good Instagram shot of wherever they are? That just seems totally crazy, doesn't it?

I won't say I've never used Instagram to do research on a travel destination I had in mind, but I definitely do not plan my travel around whether or not a place is Instagram-worthy. For example, before Adam and I visited the snow monkey park in Nagano, Japan, I was obsessively checking the location tag of the snow monkey park on Instagram because I wanted to know what the conditions were and how many monkeys were actually around, just so I could get a feel for what to expect when we arrived. But did I plan this trip just to get a few good Instagram photos of the monkeys?? No. I mean... What?? I did post some photos on Instagram, but my goal wasn't to visit this place for Instagram likes. It's just so hard for me to believe that this is actually the case for some people. Is it?? I mean, it must be. The article says it is. But I so badly want to speak to these people because I have so many questions.

So on a similar topic, there's something else I wanted to bring up that I realized about two years ago... It was honestly the first time I thought to myself, "Whoa, okay, I'm officially not a young person anymore," I mean, yeah, I was 28 and to most people that is young, but to an 18-year-old, that is ancient. At the time, I was going to school with 18 and 19-year-olds, so to them, I was the dinosaur in the room and they found it so fascinating. Honestly, it was really annoying at times (especially when one girl kept reminding me, "YOU'RE 10 YEARS OLDER THAN ME!?! OMG THAT'S CRAZY!) lol but whatever.

Anyway, while I did feel much older than them and at times it bummed me out, it was sort of fun observing how people 10 years younger than me communicate with their friends these days. Hardly any of them used Facebook, and if they did, it was minimally. Most of them used Instagram or Snapchat.

So back to what I was saying before about the moment I realized how old I was... I was on Instagram one day, and I noticed a friend of mine from school (she was 19) posted a photo that morning, and underneath it, there was a comment she left where she tagged one of her friends and wrote, "You didn't comment on this one yet." I thought to myself, "Huh, that's weird," but then continued on with my day.The next week, she posted another photo. Underneath it, she tagged the same friend and wrote, "You didn't comment on this one yet." I thought, "Hmmm, that's weird, didn't she do that last week?" So out of curiosity, I went to her profile and looked back on some old photos. All the photos had tons of comments. Tons and tons of comments, mainly from other girls showering her with compliments. Some photos had comments from the friend she kept tagging, but most of them had comments she had left on the photo herself, calling out and tagging the same friend, "reminding" her to comment. Then, a few comments down, her friend would obey and leave a comment.

THIS WAS MIND-BLOWING. This was crazy crazy crazy and I was shocked. I just could not imagine one of my friends tagging me in the comments section of her own photo, "reminding" me to leave a comment. I would be irate! Don't beg me for comments, what's wrong with you?? Nobody my age would do something like this... Because that's insane.

But guess what? It's what 18 and 19-year-olds are doing now. After I discovered this, I did more research and actually found a podcast on the topic. It's an interview with three girls (age 13 and 14) who all admitted to doing this very thing. They also talked about how the comments were usually things like, "OMG you're soooo pretty," "you're stunning," "OMG perfect," or some other compliment like that. Even if it was a fake compliment, everyone was doing it. It's like the opposite of cyberbullying, and in a way, that's great - fake compliments for everyone! But then it makes you wonder what this does to their brains? Is this why my young friend tagged her friend in those photos, reminding her to comment? Was she worried her friend maybe saw the photo but didn't like the photo? Did she need that validation from her? And sadly, I think the answer is yes. Someone else I know told me their young daughter, also 18, got into a fight with her friend because she didn't respond to an Instagram comment fast enough. When I was in China, one of the 18-year-old girls in our group said she waits to post photos on Instagram because she knows what time of day she'll get the most likes. (6pm PST, if you were wondering.) I'm still friends with her on Instagram, and like clockwork, she still posts almost every other day around 6pm. Isn't that absurd?

So going back to the main topic at hand here - do Millennials plan their vacations based on how Instagrammable a location is? When it comes to younger Millennials, that is probably true, and I'm so sad for them. I can't imagine what it must have been like to grow up with social media the way they did. I think a lot of older people (Baby Boomers) lump everyone under the age of 30 into a big pool and assume we're all the same. But I'm here to tell you that is not at all true. Today, the difference between a 30-year-old and a 20-year-old is huge, and I do think social media and the internet have a lot to do with that. Can you imagine getting bullied online at age 9? What a horrible thing. Kids are already awful to each other, but throw in the internet and things get much scarier. The suicide rate for young kids today is startling, and a lot of it has to do with cyberbullying.

The earliest memory I have of using the internet was in high school, making a LiveJournal account, and then eventually an Aim profile and later, a Myspace page. But I was 14? 15? Even that's young, but I can't imagine having a Facebook or Instagram profile at age 8 or 9. But it's just how it is now. These kids are growing up in a world where craving attention from their friends and followers from an early age is "normal" so maybe this pressure to get a good Instagram shot is much more common than we might think.

It's an interesting topic and I'd love to know if any of you have noticed this. What do you think about people (Millennials) traveling only to "Instagrammable" locations?

Thanks and I hope your week is off to a great start! As always, thanks for reading, xoThis is a sponsored post, though all words and opinions are my own. I only partner with companies I’m passionate about. 💕