Smartphones Are Killing What It Means To “Travel”
By: Eric Goldschein
Tags: Travel, Backpacking, Vietnam, Social Media, Technology

Here’s the thing: I get why smartphones are so useful when traveling.

When I arrived in Tam Coc a few days, I was alone and without any idea of where to go or what to do. All my worldly possessions were on my back, but the one that should have told me where to sleep, my Lonely Planet book, had little to say about accommodations in the area.

So I went to the nearest restaurant, ordered a coffee, and spent the next 20 minutes researching options until I hit on a winner. I ended up staying in a beautiful place, built into the side of a mountain, with somewhat-hot water some of the time and a private, cozy room for $15 a night. Thanks, smartphone.

I use my phone for so much. I download maps of cities I’m about to visit so I can find my way around. I get recommendations of where to eat, which is good not just for my stomach but for my Instagram. I take decent pictures and videos. I learn what the prices of bus trips should be, so I don’t get ripped off too badly. I even order cabs, just like I do in the U.S. — except sometimes the cabs are motorbikes, which is awesome.

And yes, I use it to communicate with my friends and family back home. I send Facebook messages, like Instagram photos, and see what fresh bullshit Donald Trump is tweeting, with nearly zero pause. No more dropping a meal’s worth of money at an Internet cafe to make a call, or hoping my postcards make it across the ocean, or trying to find an English language newspaper at an expat bookstore. Being connected to the familiar can be a great source of comfort, especially as a solo traveler.

And yet.

Maybe it was better when I could go without getting texts from my mom (love you, Mom) on a daily basis. Maybe it was better to roll the dice and choose a restaurant at random, to be pleasantly surprised (or, less often, burned badly) by the results. Maybe it wasn’t easier to make friends with fellow travelers when I was younger because I was younger and had a greater propensity for getting drunk and sleeping in squalid hostel dorm bedrooms, but because my head was turned more to my surroundings than to my own lap.

In short, maybe travel was better when I was actually traveling — moving through a different space. Now, despite being in a different location, I find myself looking at the same five-inch space between my hands that I do back home.

Not to rain on other people’s parade, or tell them how to travel, but it’s compounded by the fact that almost everyone else I’ve crossed paths with is doing it, too. The people I’ve checked out pagodas and gotten dinner with — they take out their phones at the table to post to their social media feeds, or check Whatsapp. The fellow travelers at the delicious street food spot are hunched over their devices like it’s the screen light that’s giving them life, rather than the fried noodles. Hostel common rooms are like funhouse mirrors — it’s the same image, slightly distorted to account for body type: everyone facing the same way, heads inclined downwards, tapping away.

To be clear, there are still vestiges of the “old way.” I still meet other travelers, on tours and in bars and while waiting for the bus. But it happens less frequently than before.

Traveling is becoming a bit like going to a concert. We’re all just holding our phones up, taking stupidly long videos of something without actually looking at it, so we can post it on Instagram — because if you didn’t post it, why did you even go? — and then never watch it again.

To that point, this isn’t just a travel problem. We all know that. I was struck by a Gizmodo article that covered comments by former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya:

“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” Palihapitiya said. “No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem — this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem” … “So we are in a really bad state of affairs right now, in my opinion. It is eroding the core foundation of how people behave by and between each other. And I don’t have a good solution. My solution is I just don’t use these tools anymore. I haven’t for years.”

I knew that my smartphone use was a problem back in the U.S. What I didn’t expect was how easy it would be to continue using my phone/accessing my email/checking my apps when I was in Vietnam; that the breakdown of communication between people in real life would extend to the backpacker trail as well.

See the man visit the highly emotional and informative War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, only to take off his shoes, pull out his phone, and text furiously.

Maybe I’m not trying hard enough, not traveling in the right circles, to the right places. But it didn’t feel that way just a few — okay, some — years ago.

Maybe that trend won’t continue when I get to rural parts of Laos or Cambodia. I hear that WiFi is harder to come across in Thailand than in Vietnam, where every cafe and even night bus has a router. (Though perhaps that will just send people into withdrawal, and the connected spots will be even more anti-social.)

I thought that would be the case when I went trekking around the villages of Bac Ha in Northern Vietnam — to walk through the mountains near the border with China, to sleep in the homes of the Flower H’mong and Tai people. I didn’t bring a phone charger for the three-day, two-night trip: Space was at a premium. And if it died? Fine.

Except: Every village we visited, every home we stayed in, had WiFi. The password was the first thing my guide offered me when I arrived at the homestay each night, even before the post-hike beer. He even had an extra charger for me.

I declined the password both nights. It felt good to take a break. I looked at the mountains and the stars instead.

But man, it felt even better to connect again afterwards, and see my phone flood with Snapchat notifications, Facebook messages, texts and voicemails.

To travel used to mean taking a break from the ordinary life that, in many ways, has been carved out for us due to circumstances beyond our control. It used to mean fresh experiences, new stimuli, different perspectives. Now, it’s increasingly about feeding the beast that is our smartphone addiction — or functioning as an excuse to take a break from that addiction, only to return to it with a vengeance.

That worries me. I wonder if it worries other people too.