Instagram Made Me Do It: When ‘Hidden Gems’ Stop Being Hidden

On how discovery becomes destruction and the dilemma of sharing secret spots

In 2010, a local surfer from Bali could tell you exactly where to find an empty beach with perfect waves and pristine sand. By 2020, the same beach had a name everybody knew, a geotag with 50,000 posts and a line of beach clubs charging $30 for a sun lounger. This story repeats itself in every corner of the world, from Iceland’s waterfalls to Japan’s shrines to Mexico’s cenotes. It’s a predictable pattern: discovery, virality on social media, misuse and degradation. We call it the Instagram Effect, and it’s radically changing the way we travel.

The anatomy of going viral

It’s a deceptively simple mechanism. One person discovers a gorgeous location a little off the tourist path. they post a photo on Instagram, the algorithm does its job, the more visually dramatic the photo the better. The post performs well, then more people look at it, save it, share it and add it to their itineraries. Travel bloggers publish listicles: “10 Hidden Gems in Bali You MUST Visit”. The geotag becomes a beacon. What once took decades to grow through word-of-mouth and niche travel publications now unfolds in months, even weeks.

A lavender farm in Provence suddenly went from a family business into an Instagram star overnight when it became the subject of a single viral post in 2019. The owners showed up the next morning to find their fields trampled, fences broken and hundreds of people taking photographs in their private property without permission. The farm shut its doors to the public in less than a week. This isn’t an isolated incident. Arizona’s Horseshoe Bend went from 4,000 visitors a year to nearly 2 million people. It gets worse when people put their lives in danger for a photo. In Trolltunga, Norway, rescue operations spiked 500% as unprepared tourists tried the strenuous hike in flip-flops for the photo.

Perhaps the most symbolic example is the Wanaka Tree in New Zealand. The lone willow standing in Lake Wanaka became one of the country’s most photographed spots, with visitors wading into the water at all hours, climbing on fragile branches, and carving initials into its bark. The tree became so synonymous with Instagram tourism that when it was vandalised in 2020 and had several branches cut off, it sparked a national conversation about what we’re willing to destroy for content.

The content creator’s dilemma

Travel bloggers and influencers are caught in a particularly difficult position. The very premise of these apps is built upon the sharing of locations, thankfully a lot are increasingly recognising the harm it brings. Some creators are geotagging vaguely (as “somewhere in Portugal”) or not tagging at all. Others have stopped going to the popular spots, and are searching for new remote locations to maintain the edge. But this raises its own problem: the search for unknown places just pushes the destruction deeper into untouched areas.

I felt this dilemma acutely several years ago when I was working in Oman and a colleague invited a small group of us to his village. We got to stay with his family in a place that was very remote and absolutely stunning. And even though I took photos, I decided not to share them.

It felt like the right thing to do. I felt so privileged to visit this place where I was welcomed in good faith. But I knew that if I don’t post them, someone else will. The damage happens either way.

I’m not writing this from a moral high ground- far from it. I’ve geotagged other places without thinking. I’ve written articles and made content that I questioned later. I’ve faced this dilemma more times than I’d like to admit, and I still struggle with where the line is. I am, in many ways, part of the problem I’m writing about, and that’s exactly why I think it’s worth talking about.

When locals lose their spaces

The human cost of Instagram tourism often gets overlooked in favour of environmental concerns, but it’s equally significant. When a neighbourhood becomes a photo backdrop, residents become extras in someone else’s content.

Take Positano as an example. The colourful cliffside town has been photographed to death, with certain doorways and staircases becoming so popular that homeowners have installed signs begging tourists not to sit on their steps. Some residents report being unable to leave their homes during peak hours due to crowds blocking streets for photos.

I’ve witnessed this happen in Chefchaouen, the blue city in Northern Morocco. Once a quiet town known mostly to locals and a handful of backpackers. Today, it’s hard to walk through the medina without passing multiple staged photoshoots, souvenir shops, and cafés designed specifically for content creation.

Sathish J. Flickr

The environmental toll

Beyond the social impact, there’s measurable environmental damage. Maya Bay in Thailand, made famous by the film “The Beach” and later amplified by Instagram, had to close in 2018 after 80% of its coral died from tourist activity. Scientists estimated it would take a decade for the ecosystem to recover. The bay has since reopened, but with strict regulations: daily visitor numbers are capped, boats can no longer enter the bay itself, and the beach closes for two months every year to allow nature to regenerate. It’s a model of what intervention looks like when we’ve already gone too far.

Iceland, a country of just 398,000 people, now receives over 2 million visitors annually, many come to chase the same dozen Instagram-famous locations. The country has had to close several natural sites due to damage from overcrowding. Moss that takes decades to grow has been trampled in minutes by tourists stepping off marked paths for unobstructed photos.

The problem compounds when visitors treat these places as sets rather than ecosystems. In 2024, a tourist at Pompeii was caught carving initials into a 2,000-year-old home at the archaeological site.

Instagram created a mindset of “ leaving your own mark and proving you were there” that matters more than respecting history. We now have a generation of travellers who interact with places as if they exist solely for their feed.

The economics of virality

The system encourages the wrong kind of financial growth. When a location goes viral, local economies can initially boom. Businesses open, jobs are created, money flows in. But this prosperity is often short-lived because investors are mostly outsiders who seize the opportunity before locals get a chance to do the same. International hotel chains, restaurant groups, and tour operators move in, this drives up property prices and pushes out small businesses and residents. The town of Hallstatt, Austria, is a good example. After becoming phenomenally popular due to social media, the 800 people village now receives up to 10,000 visitors per day. Property prices have skyrocketed, locals have been priced out, and the mayor has implemented visitor restrictions. The town is considering a permit system just to enter.

The irony is that once a place becomes too popular, it stops being “Instagrammable” in the way that made it famous. The crowds become part of the scenery, which in turn destroys the illusion of discovery that made the original photo appealing. So the cycle begins again somewhere new.

Barcelona. Pixabay

Do we have a responsibility to stay quiet?

This brings us to the central ethical question: if you find a beautiful, remote place, do you have a moral obligation not to share it?

Ask a successful influencer and you will immediately be flooded with arguments for sharing: gatekeeping is elitist, knowledge should be free, and no one owns a public space. Why should you get to enjoy something that others can’t? Isn’t the whole point of travel to discover and share experiences? Plus, if you don’t post it, someone else will anyway.

The arguments for not sharing are equally compelling: not every place has the infrastructure to handle mass tourism, local communities should have autonomy over their spaces, and some ecosystems are too fragile for heavy tourism. Just because you can visit a place doesn’t mean you should broadcast its existence to millions.

There’s also the question of who gets to decide what remains hidden. Often, the people advocating loudest for gatekeeping are those who’ve already had their moment of discovery. It’s easy to say “stop coming here” once you’ve gotten your perfect sunset photo.

What responsible sharing might look like

I’ve had many conversations about this topic with influencers and content creators and many have started experimenting with alternative approaches:

Delayed posting: Sharing locations weeks or months after visiting, reducing the immediate rush of copycats and allowing for more sensible reflection on whether the place can handle virality.

Vague geotagging: Tagging the general region rather than the specific spot, forcing people to do their own research and naturally filtering out those who aren’t willing to put in effort.

Paywalling sensitive content: On platforms like Substack and others. I know several writers who do this and I do this as well when I write about fragile places. It’s about creating a small barrier to entry that filters for readers who are genuinely invested rather than casual scrollers looking for their next photo op.

Community consultation: Some travel bloggers now reach out to local communities or tourism boards before posting about lesser-known locations, asking if they want the attention and how to direct it responsibly.

Leading by example: Showing the effort required to reach a place (the early wake-up, the difficult hike, the research) rather than making it look effortless, which naturally discourages casual visitors.

These aren’t perfect solutions, but they show effort and a will to move away from the “tag everything” culture that has prevailed for so many years.

The places we’ll never see

There are places in the world you and I will never visit, and that’s okay. In fact, it’s necessary.

There are many Indigenous communities around the world who maintain sacred sites and don’t share them with outsiders. Conservation areas exist where human access is strictly limited or prohibited. Some of the world’s most pristine ecosystems remain that way precisely because they’re difficult or impossible to reach.

The idea that we have a right to go anywhere and share everything is relatively new and arguably tied to a mindset that assumes access and visibility are always justified. Maybe the question isn’t whether we should share secret places, but whether we should be seeking them out in the first place.

Moving forward

The Instagram Effect isn’t going away anytime soon. Social media is too embedded in how we travel and will continue to shape where people go and how they behave. But we can, as individuals, choose how we participate in this system.

Before posting about that perfect hidden beach or secret viewpoint, ask yourself:

• Can this place handle more visitors?

• Am I sharing because the place matters, or because I want engagement?

• What are the consequences of this going viral?

• Have I asked locals how they feel about increased tourism?

The most powerful thing you can do is to simply enjoy a place without needing to broadcast it and to understand that not everything beautiful needs to be seen by everyone.

What’s your take on this? Have you ever chosen not to share a location? Have you ever visited somewhere that was ruined by Instagram tourism? Let me know in the comments.