Alexandra Styron is an author in New York. Her most recent book is “Steal This Country: A Handbook for Resistance, Persistence, and Fixing (Almost) Everything.”
My husband and I recently went on a walking trip in Europe. The landscape was lush, the views killer, the villages pretty much unchanged since men went about in doublets and hose. We were with good friends. There was a little adventure, a few mishaps, and a lot of laughter. I’m not much of a photographer, but whenever I remembered, I reached in my day pack for my phone and snapped pictures of what we saw and did. I wanted to capture the experience so I could look back on it and recall more clearly a happy time that will not, could not, come again. Preserving memories is surely the greatest gift of modern photography.
There was a time when I would have posted the experience on Instagram, too. Why? I don’t know. For the same reasons everyone posts. To share the beauty of an extraordinary scene. To let people know what I’m up to, where my interests lie. And, yeah, I guess to brag a little. I got to go to this amazing place. I’m having fun. I have cool friends. But on this trip, as with most of my travel now, I held my fire. Looking out over the moors, dotted with heather and sheep and not much else, I found myself stirred by the majesty of the land and appreciative of a place going about its business pretty much as it has always done. You know what’s really awesome about this setting? I thought. No one else is in it. I liked it that way, and I thought the livestock did too. I kept my apps closed and walked on.
Granted, I may be extra-sensitive to the problems of overtourism. One of the great privileges of my life has been to spend much of it on Martha’s Vineyard. Anyone who has ever been to the island can recite its charms; anyone who has visited over decades can clock the changes. Traffic snarls, housing crises, bacteria-laced ponds, ticks! OK, ticks have nothing to do with tourism, but many of the Vineyard’s other woes can be tied directly to the swell in population during high season and the obsessive need of that population to broadcast about it. When I was a young derelict, after the bars closed down there used to be a neat little thing. You could walk behind the Old Stone Bakery, tap on a rusty screen door, and for a couple bucks, the guys on the overnight shift would sell you a bag of sugar-dusted crullers. Now Back Door Donuts has 22,000 followers and ships nationwide to people who unbox them on TikTok. It’s not that I expect to ever again explain “It’s an island off the coast of Massachusetts,” but I bet even the sun over Menemsha would be glad to set just one time without the shutter clicks and the hashtags.
Overtourism is a global, and well-documented, problem. Barcelonans are marching in the streets; the Mona Lisa has vanished behind arms and cellphones. Back in the postcard days, pretty places had it good. Locals were proud to live in unique destinations, and tourism was an economic boon. But the rise of social media, plus the mainstreaming of international travel, have now muddled that equation. The waves are more like hordes, and whatever positive contribution visitors make financially is often outweighed by negative impacts on the environment, real estate, traffic, and nerves. It’s nice to be Liked, but no one wants to be loved to death.
Of course, there are plenty of other good reasons to second-guess one’s travel posts. Over the years, I’ve considered them all. In a world full of suffering, how cool, really, is my group selfie at this mountaintop resort? Is it safe to post my whereabouts? Whose feelings am I going to hurt? And still, when I’m not being a spoilsport, I fully appreciate all the positivity that shared photos can generate. After all, it’s lovely to catch the spirit of an intrepid wanderer standing in awe of Mother Nature, fun to giggle over an exotic custom or ogle an unfamiliar meal. But I believe a more toxic and expansive residue is formed when everyone indulges the impulse to advertise their travel. Ultimately, the pleasures of that locale will be less pleasurable for the sightseers who come behind you and less sustainable for the people who call it home. As I recently found myself shouting at the TV anchor jamming my feed with his Vineyard pics, If you love the place so much, why don’t you shut up about it?!
Not long after we returned from our trip, our daughter left for a semester abroad in a historic city. She never posts anything and shares photos, via text, only if we beg. But it’s OK. I’ve devised a workaround. It’s location sharing + Google Street View + my imagination. In my head, I’m giving her lots of 👍🏼s. I think the city’s going to like her, too.
