Finding the tech balance when we travel

My guess is that we’re all exhausted. We’re tired of the constant slew of awful news, of having to face the reality of how selfish and cruel humans can be, how our beautiful world is being destroyed by people who deliberately decide not to care.

We’re tired because it’s getting harder and harder to earn a decent living, and we’re tired because we stare at screens all day long. We’re tied to these screens that bombard us with information, to our work computers, our cell phones, our tablets, even to our evening tv screens. It’s a lot.

And I’m not saying we should look away or stop caring. Of course not, we should be finding ways to protest, and thinking about how we can start small (and probably only figurative) fires every day, but that’s whole other subject.

I’ve been reading a lot recently about how people are starting to turn to slower travel options. This is being referred to in the press as ‘analogue travels’, ‘calm-cations’, and ‘vacation detoxes’.

Basically, we’re just talking about leaving the tech behind, not answering emails, and disconnecting from social media. Great, yes. Sounds like a plan, even if it doesn’t really need a snazzy-headline-attention-grabbing-name, right?

Everything I’ve read though has focused on luxury travel options, how the expensive hotels are creating tech free spaces, and actively offering alternatives for those who can afford to step away.

Once again, the articles we read and the social media we consume is preaching to us, making us feel bad because we can’t quite reach these lofty levels.

Most of us are still travelling with our mobiles in our pockets and staying in hotels that *gasp* don’t offer classes for organic-silk-printing, or swan-sewn-oat-bread-baking.

According to analysis from the travel eSIM app Saily, about one in four adults now choose trips specifically without phones or internet access.

That’s ok when you aren’t worried about the teen you left at home who promises not to throw wild parties, or the elderly relative who has started having strange turns, or when you’re not worried about your freelance jobs drying up if you’re not engaging and responding to call-outs every day.

I reckon that this “no-tech” doesn’t really work for the majority of us, even if we’d like it to.

Personally, I need my mobile phone and I don’t want to travel without it. Not only for the home-based reasons. There are travel based reasons for needing access to my phone and the internet too:

✈ My phone holds my access to transport via apps and boarding passes - we’re expected to be paperless so often.

🗺️ My phone is my map. I truly love a real map but a map in my phone is so, well, handy. It can help me find the best route, tell me where to find amazing ice cream as I walk, and more. Internet maps are probably my favourite technological advance of all the advances I’ve seen in my adult life.

📸 Many of us use our phones as our cameras. Sure it’s true that it’s good to actually experience our experiences rather than just record them, but I certainly want to have photos too.

🎟️ Many attractions and tourist sites these days require booking in advance and we receive our tickets via email. I guess we could print them out but that’s just more paper we’re wasting.

☎️ It’s my means of contacting my loved ones while I travel. I love sharing photos and being in touch with my people while I’m off adventuring. I’m old enough to remember the thrill of being totally out of contact but I’m also soppy enough to now love being able to say hi when I want to.

🛜 I also don’t much like hotels or cafés that tell me they’re internet free for ‘my own good’. It feels sanctimonious and preachy.

I think so.

I do definitely like to slow down when I’m travelling but I don’t need (or at least I don’t think I do) full screen-detox. So what then?

💻 If I don’t have to work, I try not to take an extra screen. I don’t watch tv or read on my mobile so, no screen, less desire to watch tv. If there’s a tablet or a laptop around, you can guarantee it’ll be used.

🧒🏻 Same for my kids, sometimes a tablet is allowed on a vacation, sometimes not. In my family the general rule is that on short trips we take books and games. On longer trips we tend to allow a tablet, accepting that everyone wants downtime on their own sometimes and that tv/computer games aren’t inherently evil.

📴 Finding ways to step away from the constant bombardment of information and what feels like competitive travelling we see on social media is definitely important. Cutting back on social media is a good idea generally, and on vacation, it’s absolutely a good call.

Every day of a trip doesn’t have to be a massive adventure, and every adventure doesn’t have to be massive.

When I travel, I often genuinely do like to see as much as possible, partly because I then write about what I see and learn on my travel blog, mexicocassie.com, and partly because I’m not a sitting still kind of person.

However, I do make my plans and try and ensure a balance - a day or two doing city activities, then a day in nature, whether that’s in a park, finding somewhere in the countryside to walk, or by water.

What I say therefore, is work out what you really care about and stop worrying about what other people, people on the internet tell us we should do.

❌ And although I’ve just recommended not listening too much to people in the internet, I’d still rather we listen to people than use AI to plan trips. AI might have its uses and value (I grudgingly accept) but for me, it’s value is absolutely not in how it steals information from websites like mine and then feeds it to you in a crappier form.