The Swedish Movement That Started It All
The concept of “flight shame,” known as “flygskam” in Swedish where the movement began, has been gaining significant traction over the past several years. Sweden saw measurable changes in domestic air travel statistics, with reported declines compared to 2018 throughout 2019. This wasn’t just talk – people were actually changing their behavior.
The movement emerged from genuine environmental concerns, with activists like Greta Thunberg leading by example. Terms like “att smygflyga,” meaning “to fly in secret,” became part of the cultural vocabulary. There’s evidence that flight shame debates have already influenced behavior, particularly visible in Swedish air transport statistics for Swedish citizens.
Social Media Amplifies the Judgment
Social media has amplified travel shaming significantly. In our hyper-connected world, everyone has become a critic, and travel makes an easy target. The platforms that once inspired wanderlust are now breeding grounds for moral policing.
The more you post about your trips, the more ammunition critics have against you. Every season, destinations like Bali, Santorini, and the Amalfi Coast struggle with overtourism triggered by social media content. What was once personal sharing has become public performance, subject to intense scrutiny.
The Psychology Behind the Shame
When people feel their values are being attacked, they tend to harden their positions – shaming someone often makes them do more of the same thing. Study after study has shown this to be true, and telling someone they’re bad when no one wants to think of themselves as a bad person won’t get you anywhere.
Research from Norway between 2020 and 2022 found that most people display ambiguous, vague, or neutral attitudes toward flight shame, with perceived norms showing stronger associations with self-reported flight shame than with willingness to accept increased travel costs. The shame mechanism appears to be more about social conformity than genuine behavior change.
The Environmental Guilt Complex
While aviation currently represents only about 2 to 3 percent of global carbon emissions, its share is growing rapidly as more people gain resources to travel, and for many with travel privileges, flying represents the largest part of their personal emissions footprint. Air travel accounts for 2.5% of global carbon emissions, and in the US, flying accounted for 8% of transportation emissions but less than 3% of total carbon emissions.
These statistics create a perfect storm for environmental guilt. Most air travel does harm the environment, so there’s plenty of embarrassment to go around. The numbers give shamers concrete ammunition while making travelers genuinely question their choices.
The Overtourism Connection
One study found that 61% of travelers have started avoiding certain locations to keep from contributing to overcrowding and other negative impacts. Summer 2024 saw renewed protests against overtourism, with the UN forecasting that 2024 would see tourist numbers exceed the 2019 record of 1.46 billion.
A significant spike in anti-tourism conversations occurred in July 2024, when mentions increased dramatically due to thousands of Barcelona locals marching through streets and spraying tourists with water. These dramatic scenes became viral content themselves, further fueling the shame cycle.
The Different Types of Travel Shaming
Travel shaming manifests in several distinct categories that reveal our cultural anxieties. Environmental travel shaming, exemplified by Swedish flygskam that became trendy before the pandemic, targets air travel’s environmental impact. Political travel shaming occurs when people visit controversial countries like North Korea or Iran, or places with indigenous populations and histories of exploitation.
Animal travel shaming targets activities like “Big Five” hunting expeditions in Africa or swim-with-dolphins experiences, driven by concerns about animal welfare. Each category reflects different moral frameworks that people use to judge others’ travel choices.
When Jealousy Masquerades as Morality
Sometimes people making assumptions about travelers are simply wrong, and shamers are probably just jealous because they didn’t get to visit luxury destinations themselves. Travel shaming often stems from perceived environmental harm, cultural insensitivity, or simple jealousy.
The luxury travel posts that trigger the most intense reactions often reveal more about the observer’s financial situation than the traveler’s environmental impact. Long-haul luxury travel, environmentally taxing trips, and visits to politically controversial or overcrowded destinations often draw fire from online critics. The moral high ground becomes a convenient mask for economic envy.
The Pandemic Effect on Travel Policing
During the pandemic, many Americans mistakenly thought they had acquired a license to tell each other how they could travel. This period normalized the idea that travel choices were everyone’s business, creating lasting changes in social dynamics around mobility.
Growing climate change awareness then lit a fire under this phenomenon. The combination of health concerns and environmental activism created a perfect storm of moral authority that many people felt justified wielding against fellow travelers.
The “What The Hell” Effect
Calls for purity and shaming exclude people and narrow coalitions when we desperately need more people demanding climate action, and psychologists have documented that shaming personal behaviors can lead to the “what the hell” effect, where people conclude they’ll just indulge as much as they want if they can’t meet impossible standards.
This psychological backlash undermines the very goals that travel shamers claim to support. Instead of reducing emissions, shame often triggers defiant overconsumption as people reject what they perceive as unfair moral standards.
The Rise of Defensive Strategies
Environmental consultant Shel Horowitz advises having a diplomatic answer ready, explaining how travel allows bringing back solutions from other countries. He tells critics that his travel to places like Iceland taught him about renewable energy and gave him deeper understanding of environmental issues others face.
Another strategy involves oversharing travel choices, letting everyone know you’re a conscious traveler by captioning photos with details about eco-hotels and locally sourced food. These defensive tactics show how pervasive the judgment has become.
What This Says About Modern Society
A recent Temple University study found that embarrassment caused by travel shaming can make people change their behavior. Some argue that humans were nomadic until about 12,000 years ago, making a peripatetic lifestyle more traditional than a sedentary one. The shame around movement reveals how disconnected we’ve become from our fundamental nature as mobile beings.
The travel shaming phenomenon exposes deeper anxieties about inequality, climate change, and cultural identity in our globalized world. It’s not really about the flights or the hotels – it’s about who gets to move freely through the world and at what cost to everyone else.
Travel shaming has become a mirror reflecting our collective struggles with privilege, responsibility, and environmental reality. Travel remains one of life’s best experiences, and we shouldn’t avoid it just to pacify the shamers, but we need to remember that travel shaming is real, as is our right to see the world. The challenge lies in finding balance between genuine environmental concerns and the human need for connection and discovery. What do you think about this cultural shift? Are we becoming more conscious travelers or just more judgmental people?