A visitor eats an edible balloon at the Museum of Ice Cream across from the Whitney Museum in New York City, July 29, 2016. Photo by: Kena Betancur/Getty Images
The city of George Town is a tourist hot spot. It is a town in the Malaysian state of Penang. Tourists go to explore the sherbet-colored shophouses, intricately tiled courtyards and historic temples and mosques that all make for great photos. In recent years something else has been attracting camera-toting travelers: dozens of street art murals widely used as selfie backdrops for Instagram users.

Penang and other cities are adapting to the wildly popular photo-based social media apps. Instagram, for example, has 800 million users, which is more than a tenth of the world's population. There is a larger trend of public and private spaces morphing to appeal to users of such apps. This practice is changing our visual landscapes bit by bit. Call it the "Instagramization" of the world.

Restaurants have been at the forefront of Instagramization. Social media mentions can make or break their success. Owners have learned what visual aspects appeal to customers for the perfect Instagram photo. This means restaurants have become lighter and brighter. Some chefs are creating "stunt food," dishes specifically designed to go viral. Examples of "stunt food" are colorful unicorn frappucinos and flower gelato.

Viewing Museum Exhibits Via Smartphones

Museums are also playing the game. Large-scale, immersive exhibits such as "Wonder" have become Instagram hits. Nora Atkinson works at the Renwick Gallery, where "Wonder" took place. "It's impossible to prevent (photo-taking)," she says, "so why not get with the program and the 21st century and allow it as much as you can?"

Perhaps the best illustration of Instagramization is an entirely new cultural place, the made-for-Instagram "experience." The best-known example is The Museum of Ice Cream in San Francisco, California, boasts over 93,000 posts with its hashtag, #museumoficecream. It is a series of rooms that are basically Instagram ready photo sets. The "museum" has been wildly popular.

Patrick Janelle is a famed Instagrammer. He has over 460,000 followers. He had just gotten back from a trip to The Museum of Ice Cream.

These days, everything is experienced twice, Janelle says -- first in real life, then when we share it on social media. He says that even if something isn't designed for social media, people will always consider how to post it on social media.

Photo-Op Hopping

Instagram seems to be changing how people travel, too. Travel media sites often publish stories like "The Most Instagrammable Street Art in LA (Los Angeles, California)." These lists often include places well off the tourist track. Travelers end up going to places just for the photo.

Michiel de Lange is a professor of new media studies in the Netherlands. He says many cities are trying to brand themselves through visual storytelling. One such practice is so-called "pop-up urbanism." Cities turn empty lots into temporary beer gardens or make a busy street into a pedestrian playground for a weekend. Such events are often very Instagrammable.

Some say the Instagramization of the world makes everything look the same. Kyle Chayka writes for The Guardian newspaper. She thinks that social media is spreading a generic or the same look across the globe. Coffee shops and hotels decorated in the same style can be found in London (England), Hong Kong, and Los Angeles. So what's the point in traveling, he asks?

There's also the idea that social media puts you in a bubble. You do what your friends on social media do. De Lange says this opposes the values of Jane Jacobs. Jacobs studied cities and is very well known for her work. Jacobs believed that one of a city's greatest purposes was to bring different groups of people together.

What Happened To Life Experiences?

Finally, there's the belief that experiencing life through our smartphones is bad. Critics argue that it takes us away from the moment. Instead of snapping pictures, you should simply be looking, critics say.

Janelle is very pro-Instagram. But even he thinks there is value in not always trying to snap a picture. "Ultimately what we want are really wonderful experiences," Janelle says. "And sure we want to be able to document them on social media, but we also crave things that are just really wonderful and special in real life."

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