I'd never considered myself a phone addict but suddenly I'd freed up extra hours to invest in looking at the real world — a world obsessed with and dependent on smartphones. Sitting in the coffee shops of Antigua in Guatemala, surrounded by baroque archways and pastel hues, I now had time to look down from my high horse as people on neighbouring tables arranged green juices between poached eggs and pairs of Ray-Ban Wayfarers. We're the most intelligent life form on the planet, but technology has rendered us imbeciles.
On the one hand, smartphones have, of course, made travelling easier, safer and more communicative; on the other, apps such as Instagram have sucked all originality out of what should be a personal experience. The very idea of hashtagging is, surely, an admission that now nothing's remotely unique. People used to name-drop as a means of showing off; these days, we leave hashtags and geotags — place-dropping is all the rage.
Who would want to use an original hashtag, anyway? No one would ever find it. And in our self-obsessed modern age, what would be the point in that?
I travel a lot and can reveal that the planet very often doesn't look half as good as it's portrayed on Instagram. We leave out all the pollution, poverty and degradation because it doesn't fit in with our idea of #instaperfect.
This is incredibly unhealthy, not only for our collective psyche but for the well-being and survival of our planet. We should be documenting the problems we face, not glossing over them.
On Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, I checked into a hotel that looked incredible on screen, via its #instapics. In reality, Instagram's flattering letterbox aspect ratio suited it perfectly — the half-built, derelict hotel next door aligned just out of shot in every single one of its posts. So-called "influencers" are at it, too — portraying destinations in a meticulously composed style that is often wide of the mark. Granted, I sound like a snob but it's a form of lowbrow "content" that's so editorially unsound it would seldom be tolerated elsewhere in the media. Social media, however, has become a law unto itself.
This unreal "reality" could leave people feeling extremely short-changed. The beaches of Mexico's Playa del Carmen and Tulum are, for example, currently swamped in tonnes of smelly seaweed. Not that you'd tell that from Instagram, because hotels are working around the clock to rake out gaps in the sand where amateur photo shoots can take place. Over the course of just one day I witnessed more than a dozen bikini-clad wannabe influencers pretend to wade out to sea. As soon as their friends had taken the desired shots, they turned their disgusted backs on the water and retreated to the hotel pool.
Returning home after 33 blissful days smartphone-free, I have vowed to make a beeline for an old "brick" mobile phone. If I don't, I fear I'll simply dismount my high horse, order a green juice, and let the narcissistic haze wash over me once more.
