Does virtual travel cramp your style?

Bernice Radle doesn’t stay put.

This year alone, the Buffalo-based green consultant has traveled for work or pleasure to Boston, New York, Nantucket, Baltimore, Providence, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal and all over New Hampshire.

And you’d know that if you followed her travels on Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn or her blog.

“I look at photo sharing through social media as a way to influence my friends and followers to check out cities, public art and urban spaces,” said Radle, 26. “It is a great way to sort of educate on how cool, hip, fun, interesting a city is.”

No longer do vacationers wait for photos and slides to be developed so they can put together albums or slideshows to entertain (or bore) the relatives and friends. Using a variety of social media, travelers can post highlights of their vacations as they travel, document every single meal and complain about hotel or airline mistakes in time for the businesses to correct them.

Is the photo better than the trip?

“What we’re seeing is an elaboration of what we consider to be our circle of friends,” said Karen Cerulo, a sociology professor at Rutgers University. “When we go away, we take the people in our Internet circle with us. We want to share the time that we’re having with them. This is the growth of our interaction circles.”

But all that incessant posting raises some questions: Do your friends – and, let’s face it, acquaintances you rarely see in the flesh – want to vacation virtually with you? And are you losing out on the experience by fiddling with your phone?

Five guys take same photo for 30 years

Your vacation on social media

Jason Lloyd Clement considers his online vacation behavior an extension of his work creating content for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s website.

The Washington resident is passionate about cities and all of their ingredients: traffic, people, street art, old buildings and modern architecture, and he sees social media as a way to share his love with his friends and family. (It also informs his mother that he’s OK.)

“While I’m on the road, I use Instagram and Twitter to document all the little details of a trip, especially food and quirky things I encounter,” Clement, 29, wrote in an e-mail. “I also sometimes make quick YouTube videos when I travel, like this clip of a bike ride through Buenos Aires and this little rant on why I hate napkins in South America.”

When he gets home, he often posts full collections of photos to Facebook and Flickr and remembers his trips on a board dedicated to travel on Pinterest.

Although he gets positive feedback about his postings, Clement knows he could be overwhelming some people: He was the kid in school who brought five things for show-and-tell instead of one. “Perhaps that was foreshadowing,” he writes.

America’s most charming inns

Technology makes for an overload of photos

Some posters can go overboard, says Wei Tchou, a Brooklyn graduate student who promises that she does like her friends’ vacation pictures. At least the ones with her friends in the pictures.

“Landscape shots all start to look the same pretty quickly (as) you’re like, scrolling through,” Tchou wrote. “Pretty soon you aren’t sure if you’re just cycling through the entire album loads of times or if there really are, you know, 500 photos of the same beach in Hilton Head at sunset.”

Now that it’s so easy to photograph and publish to social media, travelers can take an unlimited number of photos and post 200 to 300 of their trips, says Joanne Cantor, a communications professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

“Nobody wants to go through that many pictures to find a few that are great,” she said. “We’re not editing ourselves the way we used to.”

San Antonio, Texas —

iReporter Andrew Bennett started doing handstands in front of landmarks while he was studying abroad in 2007. His handstand in front of The Alamo in 2008 draws some interest from other visitors

Paris —

Bennett takes a stand in front of Notre Dame in 2008.

Jerusalem —

Bennett performs his ritual in front of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock in 2012.

Great Wall of China —

Bennett inverts himself at the Great Wall of China in 2010.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia —

iReporter Claire Warmenbol likes to capture her bare feet in locations all over the world. "No better feeling than having your feet free to feel the grass, the sand, the sea, and all the delicious textures the world is covered with."

Tulum, Mexico —

Warmenbol kicks her feet up in a hammock in Mexico.

Fiji —

A trip to Fiji is likely to make anyone's feet pretty happy.

The Bronx, New York, 1971 —

Steve Springer's tradition involves revisiting his early stomping grounds in the Bronx. He and two childhood friends made an agreement in 1971 to return every 10 years to the stoop of the building where one of the three lived. From left to right: Steven Springer, Steve Haimowitz (aka Witz) and Errol Honig

The Bronx, New York, 1981 —

The three replicated their 1970s photo on August 25, 1981. From left to right: Steven Springer, Steve Haimowitz and Errol Honig

The Bronx, New York, 1991 —

Springer was living in Atlanta by August 25, 1991, but he didn't miss the annual reunion in the Bronx. From left to right: Steven Springer, Steve Haimowitz and Errol Honig

The Bronx, New York, 2001 —

In 1991, none of the men had kids. But by 2001, between the three friends there were six kids. Only the three are featured here, but the reunion involves extended family and friends posing on the stoop.

The Bronx, New York, 2011 —

The 40th reunion happened a day late, on August 26, 2011, because Errol had to drive his daughter to college.

Tucson, Arizona —

Bear accompanies California resident Sue Brady on her travels. Bear might be a little out of his element in the Arizona desert.

Little Rock, Arkansas —

Bear rides Amtrak through Little Rock, Arkansas.