Gen Z digital nomad shares tips for using technology on holiday

Carly Koemptgen shares advice for how she stays present in the moment while also sharing her travels on social media. Photo / @chasing.carly

The struggle to disconnect from devices while travelling is one we’re all familiar with.

When your phone is an arm’s reach away, day in and day out, it’s awfully difficult to suddenly disconnect when we do take that long-awaited holiday.

Often, it feels like it would be easier if we went cold turkey on the tech and left it all behind. The trouble is, our devices can be supremely helpful when abroad.

With a phone, we can pay for things and photograph things, find directions, read restaurant reviews or check attraction opening hours. We can call a friend or an Uber, download airline tickets or music playlists, transfer money and check booking details.

Yet, this isn’t all we use them for. We can also scroll Instagram and Facebook, check work emails and get caught in frantic message groups. In other words, we get distracted, after spending a lot of money and time getting somewhere else. Somewhere restful or beautiful.

So, how do we balance being present in the moment with satisfying our desire to document said moment?

Few people are better equipped to provide suggestions than Carley Koemptgen, a Gen Z digital nomad who has spent the past six months living (and working) in a van while travelling New Zealand and Australia.

While sharing the realities of van life, the 25-year-old explained how she managed to enjoy her travels while capturing content about them.

“I totally struggle with that,” Koemptgen said of the balancing act, but added it was “very important” to manage her time around technology.

“It’s not healthy to be online all of the time,” she said.

Firstly, Koemptgen said she was clear about what her phone was (and wasn’t) for while travelling. Taking photos and safety? Yes. Staying in non-stop contact with people or scrolling social media? Not so much.

She referenced a TikTok chat where a person said their friends questioned why they had a phone if they didn’t reply to group chats, to which the person responded their phone was for taking photos and emergencies.

“That’s kind of how I feel or how I view my phone sometimes,” she said. “I’m using it as a camera to capture content”.

Knowing the difference between capturing content and posting it was also a way Koemptgen minimised her time online.

“When I’m in the moment and doing the thing, I often will try to snap a picture and then put it away and live in the moment,” she said.

“It doesn’t necessarily need to be shared right now.”

Instead, one could savour the limited time they have at a waterfall, local market or downtown city and wait to edit, post and wittily caption their content when they’re killing time in an airport terminal or on a train.

Going to remote places without cell service or driving were other ways that made it easy to disconnect, the Gen Z added, which made New Zealand a joy to explore.

“There’s quite a bit of time here in New Zealand, where I don’t have cell service and that’s kind of nice. Or, I’ll be driving for stretches of like two hours and can’t use my phone,” she said.

And yet, Koemptgen finds she is far from bored.

“That is sometimes when I get my best thinking done, is when I have my tunes on and like I’m just driving,” she said.