With spring break season coming to a close and summer vacation upon us, the desire to travel is almost inescapable, especially when it’s nearly impossible for a broke college student. When asked what you would do if you had all the time and money in the world, one of the most common responses seems to be to travel. It’s rare that I meet someone with no aspirations whatsoever to venture out in the world, or even just out in the country. I myself admit that I have big dreams that encompass many far away places. I make impossibly long lists of places I want to go in my lifetime, and I plan trip after trip for spring break or summer vacations, few of which are actually executed. I can imagine that many other people have paralleled experiences, but why? Today it almost comes off as cliché to say you want to travel the world. Like “yeah yeah, same with every other basic kid who wants to get a lot of likes on their international Instagram pictures.” But what are the modern motives that compel us to want to travel? Here are a few of my honest conjectures for why so many young people today (myself included) tweet about how much they want to travel the world.

We want to escape:

As young adults we have limited experiences and an even more limited space in which these experiences have occurred. That kind of constraint leads to boredom, and boredom mixed with always wanting more (a trait that never fails to be evident in youth) leads to the desire to expand, to broaden horizons, to travel. Your hometown resembles a plastic bag, small and suffocating, and the only way to survive is to cut loose and expand. While a lot of the time these kinds of feeling are legitimate, they can also be shallowly rooted. A bad breakup or a fight with friends can leave you temporarily feeling like you just want to escape, which is normal, but probably shouldn’t be the foundation of your big travel plans.

Social media makes it sound cool:

I haven’t gone a day yet where I didn’t find some sort of “go travel” or “travel vibes” twitter account on my feed. There’s millions of pictures all over social media of beautiful and exotic places and usually really attractive people hiking through the mountains or walking along some beach. It’s hard not to want to leave the regular life you’re living and run away to travel to pretty places. However, believe it or not, these images aren’t necessarily the most realistic. I actually often wonder who takes these picture and gets to just travel the world while making everyone else feel bad. I would love for that to be my job. Social media is constantly compelling you to think a certain way or want certain things. I’m not saying that you wouldn’t want to travel if you didn’t use social media, but it definitely idealizes traveling making it seem much more desirable (no matter how unrealistic it may be).

We want to find ourselves:

Yeah, okay, this one sounds kind of corny but it’s true, and I know it’s true because it said so on a Pinterest quote I saw the other day. And yes, I acknowledge the fact that getting away and traveling can really reset your perspectives and alter your mindset, but going on spring break to Cancun doesn’t exactly count. I do however think it’s important that young adults try to travel as much as they realistically can and get out of the little bubble they have spent their entire life in. It can only be beneficial to making you a more well rounded and cultured person.

We want to post pictures and brag:

Did you even go on the trip if you didn’t post a picture? We as a society have become far too dependent on what other people think, to the point that we actually might not feel satisfied if we do something and no one else knew we did it. You step foot on the sand of a beautiful beach and you’re already itching to find the perfect picture spot, and then the perfect filter and caption. You forget that you’re even on the beach and spend the rest of the day on your phone making sure everyone knows where you are. We want to travel so that others know that we are traveling. Too often, amazing experiences are being blocked by a camera and felt only through the approval of others. If you were given the opportunity to travel the world but not allowed to tell a soul or take a single photo, would you go?

We want to experience new things:

This final motivation to travel is one that I think is ageless. No matter how old or young you are, you still never really lose that drive to experience new things. Experience almost marks age better than time does. You could be 65 and have never really lived a day of your life, or you could be 23 and have accomplished a lifetime of experiences. Traveling to unfamiliar places is how you find these new experiences that challenge you and ultimately help you grow as a person.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have caught myself countless times wanting to travel for exactly these reasons, I’m not immune. I still, however, believe that I want to travel despite some of these arguably shallow motives that root from our current culture. It has always been a passion of mine and I think it’s a respectable passion if you’re wanting to for the right reasons. If you get anything from this article I hope it’s that traveling is great and you should experience new things while you’re young, but stay off your phone and do it for you, not for everyone following you on social media.