The days when (analog!) traveling meant diving headlong into a new adventure into the unknown, seem long gone. In the past, travel led to a magical place, conquered through imagination, reading, photographs, and personal dreams, which led each person to their ideal destination, not the one chosen by the masses.
Beyond everything you could imagine, there was the unknown, a smell, a perfume, a detail that revealed itself only once you reached your destination, that made each journey unique and unrepeatable, special, studded with experiences you couldn’t even imagine before leaving and which amplified its value and decreed its immortality in our memory once we returned home.
Travelling and social media
With the advent of social media and the global world, traveling seems less like a dream that unfolds little by little and more like a surgical procedure, something sterile, stripped of all emotion to make way for the anxiety of getting a like. Travel has become the fruit of a morbid curiosity, a curiosity that isn’t even our own, but is channeled by others. A curiosity not to see the place itself, but rather to see what others have already seen.
Travel has become like an information binge, where you have to absorb as much information as possible in the shortest time possible, with a nagging presumption of knowing everything about every destination, where nothing should be left to chance, but planned down to the smallest detail.
Everything is revealed even before you set off
Everyone has become a know-it-all, observing the world through a phone camera in a desperate search for the most Instagrammable destinations. It’s no longer the wonder, beauty, mysticism, or allure of a destination that makes people choose it; rather, their success depends on everything they scroll through on social media.
Everything is revealed even before you set off. There’s nothing left to discover once you reach your destination. Everything is just a click away.
Analog travelling is a choice
In a world where everything is filtered through screens, where we presume to know everything remotely, while in reality we don’t come into contact with anything and have only an aseptic approach to the world, what we really need to do to rediscover the authenticity of travel is choose to disconnect, to lose ourselves, to dive into the unknown to truly marvel, a marvel that is real and unvarnished, personal and unsuspecting.
Because you can’t travel through the images, words, eyes, and emotions posted by others. A journey is first and foremost a subjective and emotional experience, a full immersion in our soul, in our deepest self, which, thanks to this, is now awakening and living authentically in a world different from our own.
We must return to being explorers, reclaim our curiosity. A destination becomes a sort of checkpoint once we reach it. The expectation is no longer that of a dreamy child discovering a treasure, but rather the correspondence with the photo or post we saw.
Back to the analog travelling: Digital Detox destinations
Recently, several projects have been launched aimed at reconnecting with the real world and with oneself. One example is Ulko-Tammio Island, in the Eastern Gulf of Finland National Park. Since 2023, it has become the world’s first phone-free tourist destination. Another example is the United Kingdom, where it is possible to stay in wooden cabins surrounded by nature, without Wi-Fi or any technological devices.
Another trend is that of the “Luddite Teens,” young New Yorkers who choose analog ways of life. They have renounced technology and social media, using flip phones and meeting in special clubs where they can participate in activities such as reading, painting, writing, listening to vinyl, connecting with nature, and engaging in conversation. Furthermore, according to some studies, Generation Z tends to choose analog technologies to document their travels, such as Polaroids, video cameras, and 35mm film cameras.
What do you think? Are you an analog or digital traveler?