Last spring, the residents of Lake Elsinore, California, were facing a crisis: an explosion of picture-perfect poppies in the Temescal Mountains, just northwest of town. But the problem wasn’t the flame-orange flowers—it was the hordes of smartphone-carrying visitors coming to take photos of them.
During one weekend alone, as many as 100,000 poppy seekers crowded into the town of 50,000. The sightseers brought with them bumper-to-bumper traffic. Some even damaged the poppies by picking them or wandering off designated trails, which can crush the flowers’ roots and prevent future blooms from growing.
What led to the visitor boom? A few weeks earlier, some Instagram influencers had taken pictures with the first poppy blooms. (An influencer is someone with a huge social media following who sometimes makes money by posting about places and products.) Many of their posts included
As the poppy images spread across social media, hundreds of thousands of people were inspired to visit the same spots outside Lake Elsinore to snap stunning selfies of their own.
This California town isn’t the only place concerned about social media’s impact on the local environment. Geotagged posts are driving up tourism in public lands across the United States. Although visitors can help boost an area’s