Technology’s impact on the Appalachian Trail with Shalini Misra

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Travis

If you're like me, one of the great perks of visiting a beautiful landscape is being able to then share that beautiful landscape with others via social media. And based on my own use of social media, I do think that there are quite a few people who aren't like me in this respect. And that's especially true when it comes to the Appalachian Trail.

Growing up in Southwest Virginia near the Appalachian Trail, I can't say I actually knew a whole lot of people who spent time on the trail on a regular basis, or really at all. But these days, my social media feed is constantly filled with lush forests and beautiful overlooks and even the occasional person hanging from a rock. So I'm curious of the connection between this rise in digital technologies that allow us to capture and share such images and the rise in popularity of the Appalachian Trail.

And thankfully, Virginia Tech's Shalini Mishra has recently done a study on this very topic and was kind enough to join the podcast. Shalini is an associate professor of urban affairs and planning in the School of Public and International Affairs. She's also an administrative fellow in the Institute for Society, Culture, and Environment. Her research interests include the social, psychological, and health implications of the internet and digital communications technologies. Shalini and I chatted about a recent research project where her and some colleagues went out and surveyed the resource managers of the Appalachian Trail to see exactly how digital technologies were impacting the trail and the hikers that use it. We also talked about the opportunity that new digital technology might provide when it to managing that trail, and she gave us some advice on how we too can better navigate this space between digital and place-based experiences. Don't forget to follow, rate, and or subscribe to the podcast. I'm Travis Williams, this is Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

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Travis

Well, I know that you've done this project and you've done this research and you've had a paper that has come out related to the Appalachian Trail and how social media is impacting the Appalachian Trail. And so I guess I'm curious right off the bat, when you all approached this study and you started it, what were you really trying to learn about these topics?

Shalini

I'm so glad you asked that question because we went into the research project that was funded by the National Science Foundation really trying to understand whether digital technologies like crowd source data, social media, and smartphone apps could play a role in decision making, in resource managers decision making around sustainable trail infrastructure management.

So we thought that the first step would be to get the perspectives of people who are on the ground, the trail maintainers, the landowners, the resource managers who are actually managing the trail. And I thought we thought that our first kind of perspective should be grounded in how these people on the ground, resource managers on the ground address technological needs. What do they, how do they use these technologies? What do they think their potential is? And we thought this information will help us design these technologies in a way that fits their organizational setup and culture. So this is what we wanted to learn. We wanted to learn from their perspective what the opportunities are and what the challenges are and how we might take those insights to later design these technologies.

Travis

I’m really curious what challenges this new technology, not just social media, but as you mentioned, crowdsourcing and other aspects, what types of challenges are these presenting to resource managers on the Appalachian Trail? And I guess not to ask two questions in a row, but I'm curious if they are making old challenges more challenging or if they're presenting just new challenges?

Shalini

Second question first, you know, it's both. They are exacerbating some existing challenges that resource managers already face. And then they're creating entirely new experiences and new limitations, new challenges for the resource managers. So this was really one of the biggest surprises in our research. We went in thinking that, you know, other researchers are saying that, hey, these technologies have a lot of potential know, managers can use the insights from social media and crowdsourced data to plan long term to allocate resources more efficiently. We are all complaining about limited resources, right? And so if these tools and technologies could provide resource managers some ways of allocating scarce resources in a way that promotes sustainable infrastructure management, why aren't they using them? But what we discovered was that the resource managers actually think that these technologies exacerbate some of the resource management challenges that they are facing. So I'll outline a few things that the resource managers described and told us. So number one, social media, specifically Instagram and Instagramable posts have a detrimental impact on trail usage and trail degradation. So the idea is that as people share and post their visits to these very beautiful wilderness areas, other people have access to that information. And when people have access to that information, it prompts desires to be able to kind I want to go to that place too. I want a picture of myself and my family and my friends in that place too. And so while you might think that that's wonderful, it increases access to these beautiful settings. People get a chance to experience them. How wonderful. However, these settings need to be preserved. And when people gain a lot of access to these remote, sometimes remote settings, it poses challenges for maintaining that trail largely because of overcrowding. So as more and more people hike on these trails, the trail widens, for example. People create illegal campsites that proliferate these campsites, which are then very difficult to repair and maintain.

They also impact the experiences of other people. Many people are going out into these trails to experience solitude, to be away from the hustle and bustle of their daily routines and their lives. And so when they go to the trail and see 2,000 other people hiking on the trail at the same time, it's not so much of a solitude experience. It's not so much of the wilderness experience that they were hoping to experience.

Travis

Yeah, so it sounds like it's made the trail popular. So it's done a good job of maybe filling a need for marketing, but possibly too good of a job in some respects.

Shalini

Exactly, right. broadening access, the resource managers will tell us, is one of their primary goals. They don't want to keep these places hidden. This is public land, and it was created with the ethic of giving people, everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status, your station in society, the kind of work you do, your race, your ethnicity, where you are in life, it was supposed to give a chance for everyone to experience these natural environments. So resource managers will tell you that this is wonderful, but at the same time, they don't have a lot of regulatory mechanisms to actually spread out this crowd, right? You there are only two approaches to actually address this problem. One is to issue permits, which very few places on the Appalachian Trail actually have these permits. Shenandoah National Park, has limits to people, the great Smoky Mountains, right? They have, and that has a kind of limit or a regulatory permit. And I think the Baxter National Park forest has permits, but everywhere else on this 2,200 stretch of land, this linear path that people have access to, anyone can go anytime. Nobody is stopped. managers really want to retain the public land ethic of this place. they're, some of them at least are, you know, are against, you know, putting permits on this, on access to this land. But at the same time, they don't have the, they don't have any other way to, the other way is to kind of regulate the, disperse the crowd, right? And say that, you know, we already have 500 people who have started hiking the trail from Georgia you know, this season, please consider, you know, moving your start date to 15 days later. And that would be one approach, you know, if to kind of disperse the crowd on this trail. But they should be able to communicate with the hikers to be able to do that. And the hiker should be willing to listen to the resource managers, because it is perceived by the hikers that, know, why are the...Appalachian Trail Conservancy telling me what to do and when to hike. And you know, this is when I want to hike and I want to do it on my term.

Travis

When you interviewed and talked to trail resource managers, did they report having noticed any sort of tension between traditional hikers like you mentioned that are going out there for solitude and to unplug and maybe someone, admittedly so more like myself, that's like, really want a photo of me on McAfee's knob. Is there any sort of attention going on there?

Shalini

There is, there absolutely is. And there is a tension between resource managers as well. So we talked to a wide range of resource managers, more experienced ones, ones who are younger and newer to their position. And we kind of expected, there might be a generational difference in how resource managers think of these digital technologies.

To our surprise, we found that the younger resource managers actually were more negative towards these digital technologies. They choose to unplug more often than the more experienced or older resource managers. They see the limitations and pitfalls of being hooked to their phones in every setting. And they also had differing views on what the hikers are doing, doing. know, while they all agreed that there is this really direct linkage between social media use and overcrowding and trail degradation, they deferred on what their role should be to regulate that. On the one hand, resource managers say, our environments are hybridized. There is no setting in the whole world that is non-digital right now. There is no such thing as a purely digital experience and a purely place based experience. So this is what this is what technologies have brought in and they are used pervasively. And on the other hand, you know, other resource managers say, well, there needs to be some settings that are that are purely place based that and some parts of the Appalachian Trail really are place based, you will not have cell phone access and your battery is going to is going to die out in those places. So you do have to rely on a map and your wit and your spatial cognition to be able to navigate those spaces. So that's one of the dangers of really over-reliance on these digital technologies in these very remote wilderness environments. And while we did not interview the hikers in this particular study, another part of our study is actually thinking of the hiker's perspective on all of these. we are the moment studying, doing a really large scale survey on these true hikers. So we started in Georgia and Maine when they started off and we have an app in which they can answer questions over the period of six months when they are hiking the trail and we're trying to understand their experiences on the trail. And there is a divergence, you know, they say that, you know, some hikers will say, in fact, most hikers say, you known I don't like these digital technologies. I'm going there to escape from it. I feel overloaded. It's too much. I don't want all the social media. But then they do take their cell phones with them. They do connect. They do connect with others, their family members, their friends, other hikers on the trail. They build new forms of community on the trail. They make friends on the trail. And sometimes we are finding that they're even more sociable on the trail than their city life or in-person life because they form new types of community. And the resource managers say that they may say that they want to unplug, but when we ask them what facilities they need on the trail, it's like every camping site should have a cell phone charger and give us all these facilities that we always have in our life because they are so reliant on them. So this is, I don't know, it was a complicated answer to your question, but There is the bottom line is there is a tension between between how hikers say they want to experience the wilderness and how they actually do and what resource managers think they should do to preserve this AT experience, you the Appalachian Trail experience, this wilderness experience. They often bring up Benton McKay, the person who created the Appalachian Trail was, you know decades and decades ago, you know, and Benton McKay said that, well, the AT experience, Appalachian Trail experience is supposed to be a reprieve from the rapid mechanization of society. And he was talking about the industrial revolution, not digital technologies, right? And it's the opposite now. is, is, the digital technologies are a central part of the experience of the Appalachian Trail.

Travis

Yeah, well it sounds like that there is not only maybe some tension between folks that use and manage the trail, maybe even some internal tension in some of those folks who are like, really want to unplug, but I also, I kind of want to stay plugged in and, you know, be able to check in with my family and let them know I'm okay and all those good things.

Shalini

Yeah, Travis, that's exactly right. One of the biggest experiences that we hear from hikers who embark on this, it's a grueling, daunting experience to be able to finish that trail within six to seven months. And the biggest feeling, the emotion that they experience is loneliness. It is very hard to be on the trail day after day, night after night on your own. Feel like talking to the trees.

Travis

So what are some opportunities that this new technology allows us to maybe tap into?

Shalini

So from the hikers perspective, these technologies beyond access, right? Beyond making these settings accessible to more people. That's a big thing. Another thing is it reduces some of the fear and unpredictability and uncertainty of the trail, right? And the resource managers might tell you, hey, that's one of the biggest experiences that people should be interested in when they embark on this journey to experience self-reliance, minimalism, uncertainty. And the technologies take that away. You know why? Because you can check the weather and plan accordingly. can know where the sources of water are, where the next campsite is. You can plan to the minute, actually, how much you want to walk right, and where you want to stop and what you plan to do when you plan to get off the trail to replenish. Everything can be set up, right? And it diminishes that kind of uncertainty. But at the same time, the hikers might tell you it is scary to be, to feel so uncertain. It's scary to have this unpredictability. And so you could think of it as a positive as well, that you know, that it allows people to reduce some of that fear. In fact, you know, this is a very gendered question as well. When we talk to resource managers who are female, they say that, yeah, you know, the guys can say that it's great to be minimalistic and self-reliant. But if women want to experience these environments, they really feel secure with these technologies. They want to be able to reach their family. They want to be able to call people, you know, if they feel scared on the trail, right? And they want the predictability and the support that these technologies give us. So it's a gendered conversation as well.

Travis

Well, what about for resource managers? What opportunities do these present them?

Shalini

I'm so glad you asked, Travis, because you know, resource managers, we thought that resource managers, you know, we could design a digital platform for this kind of to layer in the cyber infrastructure into the trail-based infrastructure. But we discovered none of these technologies are really designed for their organizational setup and for their culture and for their ethic. These technologies that we were talking about, the social media platforms like Twitter or X, and Facebook and Reddit and Instagram or a gut hook or far out, which is the primary trail app that most hikers use. They think of this environment as an environment of consumption. That's the big insight here. So go to the setting, experience it, post your picture, share it, talk on the trail. So the point of those technologies is to keep using those technologies, right? To remain hooked on those technologies. The point is not to experience the wilderness, really. And whereas the resource managers really want people to care about this environment, you know, to learn more about it, to preserve it. They want people to have the experience of this environment because they think direct contact with something makes you care for it. They think, this is so beautiful. No other country in the world kind of has this thing. We should care for it. We should fund it. We should preserve it. That's why the experience is needed. But the technologies are not designed to do that. The technologies are designed to prompt a kind of behavior that is consumptive in its orientation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was here. A check mark. I did it. And, you know, onto the next site. You know, they think that, you know, is it a truly wilderness experience? Is it promoted? promoting conservation values, if you are so into kind of consuming this environment. And so, the digital platform theoretically could, we could aggregate information about hikers, over multiple years, right? Decades, right, of data. We could aggregate that information and we could actually share that with resource managers to show them like, Okay, here's how visitors actually use the park. Here's what is popular when, here's when the bubble is really most intense. Here's where the campsite, you you can expand this campsite because it's really needed. You know, these are the kinds of decisions that we thought that the trail, that the digital platform could help resource managers, you know, kind of help in their sustainable decision-making. But...you know, who's going to maintain that digital platform, right? And it's only going to provide you retrospective information. It's not going to provide you real-time information. When the problem is actually occurring, there's very little that the managers could do with digital information. And on the other hand, the hikers don't particularly want to hear from managers while they're on the trail. know, managers want to tell them, you know, here there's a bear problem. Say, for example, over here. Be aware of your surroundings. Here's how you store your trash or your food. They want to be able to give that information to hikers who are particularly inexperienced. But hikers don't want that information. They don't want to be bugged when they are on the trail. And they don't particularly listen to the notifications when they're on the trail. So there's a lot of technical issues as well. Like this data from social media sites, it's biased. It only caters to some people who actually use those sites. So you don't get the perspectives of everyone. It's very difficult to aggregate that data and use it ethically, because we need to be concerned about the privacy of these hikers. We hikers, we researchers, as well as the resource managers, don't want to monitor and surveil hikers, which is what some of these technologies would require you to do.

Travis

It sounds like that there is a opportunity there maybe to invent, create, dream up a platform that maybe is a little bit more useful to meet some of both the hiker and the resource manager's needs. just, it doesn't sound like we're there yet with anything that exists.

Shalini

a high five to that. Yes, yes, there is an opportunity that you need to really reimagine what these technologies can look like, you know, to work to create them with input, you know, and collaboration with off resource managers and hikers and technologies that are not for consumption, but are in the common good, right? They are for the public interest. Their goal is very clear. Their goal is not to to take your data and to use it forever and to then send advertisements to you or to use it in some other kind of way. The goal is to be able to minimize distractions, allow you to really take your consent in the way that you want this data to be used and to promote the resource manager's goals of preserving that environment.

Travis

Well, I don't hike the trail very often, but I will say that I would very much like to get that alert if there is a bear situation happening anywhere near me. Any given time of day, night, whenever, even if I'm not hiking, please let me know. I think that would be wonderful. So I'm curious what some good etiquette is when it comes to technology. When you're entering the trail and you're entering hiking, did you pick up on any good tips or any guidance that people like me could abide by?

Shalini

Resource managers would tell you that don't pack a cell phone with you. Don't pack your smartphone with you. In fact, it is not a part of the essentials that you require in their list. If you look at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy's list of essential things to bring with you, they will say paper-based map, a compass, but interestingly, no smartphone, no cell phones. And you might imagine, yeah, that's kind of impossible. That is impossible for people to, that is impossible. People keep saying, what are you dreaming? You you want me to stay without a cell phone for six months. And even if I'm a short-term hiker, you know, who's just doing a part of the trail, you know, very difficult for me to kind of cut the cord, let's just say to use it, cut the cord between people's technologies and their other aspects of their life. But, you know, realistically, what, you know, that's a good question. What can people really do?

As a researcher who's really interested in what these digital technologies do to our relationships with each other, to the way that we experience places, I would say think more instrumentally about your digital technology use. Is the technology really serving the purpose that you want to gain from a particular interaction with a place or a person? is it impeding it? Because there are situations in which the technology can be very complementary to what a person is doing. Look at us. We're able to engage across the distance, and the technology is playing a complementary role in this process. But technologies don't always complement the goals of a setting. So if your goal is to experience the trail in a spiritual way, think about what role the technology plays in your spirituality, right? If the technology is really helping you, if you're a competitive person, and we see many hikers use the technology for that purpose, right? You know, they're motivated to hike the trail because they want to, it's a fitness thing. You know, they want to be able to show it to others and to themselves that they can undertake this daunting task. And there the technology helps promote that. Right? You yeah, you you hike, you know, 12 hours today and took these many steps and went through all of these inclines. And if that's motivating you to be able to engage with these technologies. Well, well done in terms of etiquette for others. I would say that constant texting with notifications on the trail really disturbs others and the environment around you. It hampers, you know, the birds, the animals. Right. If you have loud notifications on your phone or if you're listening, some people are not engaging with that environment. They have headphones and they're listening to music or a podcast, you know, while they're hiking the trail. And as long as it's not disturbing others, I suppose it's fine, right, for them to each their own. But when you're playing loud music on the trail, that disturbs the wildlife. It disturbs other people's experiences. So I would say that that's a simple thing that you could do.

Travis

It sounds like, if I was going to summarize that, know kind of what your goals are and make sure that the technology is helping you get to the goal and not getting in the way of it, but also make sure your technology is not getting in the way of other people's goals.

Shalini

Yes, exactly

Travis

Well, that sounds like it's just good advice, not just for a hiking situation, but maybe something we can embrace in any situation when we're kind of navigating this digital versus place-based experiences that we're having.

Shalini

And it truly is, you know, because we bring these tools and technologies into our lives. And, the narrative always is, it will make you more efficient, you know, it will help you do your work better. It will give you more time for leisure. I love that one, you know, when the data never pans out for that. Nobody has time for more leisure. And it increases inefficiencies. It's because I really, really urge people to step back and reflect on their own purposes in using these technologies.

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Travis

And thanks to Shalini for talking to us about digital technologies and their impact on the Appalachian Trail. If you or someone you know would make for a great curious conversation, email me at traviskw at vt.edu. I'm Travis Williams and this has been Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

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