Is International Travel Becoming Another Form of Social Currency?

By the end of May, Spelman students may be scattered across the world, but their trips all seem to meet in the same place: social media.

For a few weeks, Instagram feeds fill with airport pictures, famous landmarks, group photos and carefully put-together photo dumps. One student is studying in Europe, another is exploring a country in Africa and someone else is posting from a beach in the Caribbean. After a while, it can feel like everyone is abroad except you.

Spelman’s popular two-week study abroad programs give students the opportunity to experience another country without spending an entire semester away from campus. These trips can be educational, exciting and genuinely life-changing. They are also hard to ignore when dozens of students begin posting them at once.

That visibility raises a question that extends beyond Spelman: When did international travel become more than an experience and start becoming proof that someone is successful, cultured and living well?

Travel has always required access, but social media has made that access much easier to display. A destination is no longer just somewhere a person visits. It can also become part of her image and another form of social currency.

A passport beside a boarding pass. A picture through an airplane window. A photo dump filled with landmarks, restaurants and carefully planned outfits.

These are the parts of international travel that usually make it online. What we do not see is everything that happened before the first picture was posted.

A photo in another country does not tell us whether a student’s family paid for the trip, she received financial assistance or she spent months saving. It does not show the application process, passport fees, airfare, spending money or other costs that may come with traveling abroad.

A student may have worked extremely hard to access the opportunity. When the entire experience is reduced to a polished photo dump, however, it can look effortless.

That missing context matters. Students who cannot afford to participate may watch large groups of their classmates travel at the same time and feel like they are missing an important part of the Spelman experience.

The students posting their trips likely do not intend to make anyone feel excluded. Most people are simply excited and want to document an experience that is important to them. Still, a post can be a genuine celebration for one person and an uncomfortable reminder for someone else.

College students already feel pressure to earn good grades, land impressive internships, join organizations and build strong professional networks. International travel can quietly become another accomplishment to add to that list.

It can start to feel like being a successful and well-rounded student also requires having a passport filled with stamps and a social media page filled with destinations.

Social media does not just affect how we view other people’s trips. It can also change how people travel.

Travelers often choose restaurants, hotels and landmarks because they have already seen them online. Some locations become popular mainly because they offer the perfect background for a picture. People may spend more time thinking about what they will post than what they are actually experiencing.

Taking pictures does not automatically make a trip shallow. Pictures help people preserve memories and share places that their friends and family may never have seen. There is nothing wrong with wanting good pictures from an experience that may only happen once.

The problem comes when making a trip look meaningful becomes more important than actually engaging with the place.

Visiting another country does not automatically make someone more cultured or globally aware. A person can travel thousands of miles, stay inside a resort, take pictures at a few popular landmarks and return home without learning much about the people who actually live there.

At the same time, a student who has never left the country may still be informed about global issues and connected to other cultures. Travel can help someone understand the world, but it is not the only way to do so.

Where someone has traveled does not automatically tell us how open-minded, educated or culturally aware she is.

Spelman is filled with ambitious students pursuing incredible opportunities. Being surrounded by that ambition can be inspiring, but it can also make comparison difficult to avoid.

One student may spend two weeks studying in Europe. Another may complete a fellowship in Africa. Someone else may take a family vacation in the Caribbean. When all of those experiences appear beside one another online, travel can begin to feel competitive.

There may be pressure to visit a more distant country, participate in a more selective program or create better content than the next person. Instead of focusing on the country’s offerings people may focus on which trip looked the most impressive.

That is when travel becomes social currency. The destination begins to feel like proof that someone has money, access or the right connections.

The reality is that pictures never tell the full story. They do not show debt, family support, financial sacrifice or the opportunities someone had to turn down. They also do not show the meaningful experiences happening at home that may not look as exciting online.

A student should not feel behind simply because she did not spend her summer in another country. She may have been working, caring for her family, taking classes or pursuing an opportunity closer to home.

Those experiences are not less valuable because they do not come with pictures in front of famous landmarks.

International travel should expand how students understand the world. It should not become another way for them to rank themselves against one another.

The answer is not for students to stop traveling or sharing their experiences. Travel is worth celebrating, and students should be proud of the opportunities they receive.

However, there should be more honesty about what those opportunities require.

Students who participate in funded programs can share the scholarships or fellowships that supported them. They can talk about the application process, explain what expenses were covered and be honest about the challenges they faced. That kind of information may help another student see international travel as something she can realistically pursue.

Colleges also have a responsibility to make global opportunities financially accessible. If international travel is promoted as an important part of the college experience, students should have clear information about scholarships, passport assistance and programs that help cover expenses beyond tuition.

There should also be a broader understanding of global engagement. Spending a semester abroad is not the only way to learn about the world. Short-term programs, international research, internships and involvement with immigrant and refugee communities can also introduce students to different cultures and perspectives.

Travel can be beautiful, educational and life-changing. It can introduce students to places and people they may have only read about before. None of that should be ignored.

At the same time, we should be honest about how social media has changed the way travel is viewed. It has become more than an experience. In many cases, it has also become a public sign that someone is successful and living an exciting life.

A passport can show where someone has been. It cannot show how much she learned, how thoughtfully she engaged with another culture or how the experience changed her.

Those parts of travel should matter the most, even if they are the hardest to fit into a photo dump.