I wish we had a travel/backpacking/gap year culture like Australia, Scandinavia, Canada, or Germany.
Long term travel (6+ months) changes people. It generally makes you more open, creative, tolerant, flexible, a better dancer (likely), a better lover (likelier), resourceful, multi-lingual, adventurous. The list goes on in IMO.
Anyone who's gone backpacking knows that even in Mexico you'll meet more Canadians (pop 35M) than Americans (pop 319M). That's sad.
If Americans traveled even half of what Australians did, this country (and world) would be better.
According to Google Trends, travel is likely becoming less popular (in the English speaking world).
This data isn't perfect because it includes all English speaking searches but pretty much every travel related search is down over the last 8 years. Student loans? Terrorism fears? Culture shift to virtual?