Have Selfie Sticks Become a Part of Travel?

In recent years, you can see these phones on a stick in the greatest attractions around the world, allowing travelers to take pictures of themselves with the magnificent scenery in the background. Well, that’s what it was intended for.

I would like to believe that the creation of selfie sticks were to reduce the anxiety of passing your phone to a stranger passer-by in hopes that they would not run away with it after the picture was taken. With the introduction of selfie sticks, we are in control of our own pictures and we can take as much time as we would like to take the perfect picture.

I’m going to admit, I was not a selfie stick fan when these items first came on the market. It was already awkward enough trying to take pictures of yourself while everyone around was staring, and now they even made sticks for that function. This definitely meant a result of a higher degree of embarrassment.

However, while travelling to Las Vegas this Spring, I ran into crowds of tourists mindlessly pointing these sticks into the air attempting to find the perfect view while doing two things: making sure they were captured in the scene and secondly, ensuring that the stick would not steal the show (in the photo that is).

I remember in the olden days when we had pocket cameras, photographs were composed of attractions, monuments, historical items and scenery. Every now and then you would ask a stranger passing by to assist you in capturing a memory of your existence in that particular destination. However, you can see that this has gradually shifted to taking pictures of ourselves to remember memories of our travels. Fortunately, the selfie stick can be manoeuvred around and reach far enough to take both ourselves and the beautiful scenery in the background.

So what is the future of selfie sticks? They have slowly transformed into a travel necessity for tourists. Selfie sticks not only allow you to construct the perfect travel memory, but you can even include yourself in the photograph. Hotels around the world are beginning to offer selfie sticks as part of their complimentary service. Selfie sticks are here to stay.