You could fill a not-so-small library with books published in the last few years that explore what the so-called attention economy has done to our brains and relationships, most recently Chris Hayes’s The Sirens’ Call. I’m not advocating giving up social media or our smartphones, as some have suggested, but many of us might wish to reconsider our relationship with these platforms and devices. I know I do. Travel is certainly caught up in this endless competition for attention (we decide where to go after gorging on other people’s fabulous posts, then spend our trips thinking about what we’ll post ourselves), but I also think it can help. I’m not just talking about those digital detoxes in which you hand over your phone upon arrival, though those have merit. I mean trips that allow you to be fully present, letting you devote all of your attention to the people you’re with and the place you’re in.
Trips like the family vacation Alice Gregory took to the unhurried, uncurated Central Oregon Coast, where, she found, “it was a luxury to want nothing.” Or the walking safari Rebecca Misner did in a remote corner of the Serengeti, where the total absence of human intervention made it possible to hear the “whistling sound that acacia pods make when the wind whips through the trees.” Journeys like these free us from the myriad inputs that constantly agitate our monkey minds and let us focus on the surprisingly hard work of just…being. Such thinking lies behind “JOMO,” one of the key 2025 trends identified by our network of preferred travel specialists. It’s short for the joy of missing out, and it’s rooted in the idea of not going and seeing the place you oohed and aahed over on Instagram but instead just going and seeing. Let’s all aim to do more of that in our travels and in our lives.
This article appeared in the April 2025 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
