Edward Granaghan doesn’t sit still. The Cream Ridge, NJ, health enthusiast spends his time tracking fitness trends and logging miles across the US and beyond— and the research backs up his instincts completely. Traveling is good for your health in ways most people genuinely underestimate, and the evidence keeps piling up.
The numbers tell an interesting story. A report from April 2025 found 94% of active travelers had trips lined up within the next six months. Nearly 108 million Americans went abroad in 2024 alone. That’s a lot of passport stamps, a lot of boarding passes, a lot of people choosing movement over staying put.
But here’s the thing: many Americans still travel rarely, especially internationally.
About 60% of Americans say they never travel internationally for leisure. Even more striking — one survey found that 11% of Americans had never traveled outside the state where they were born. For that group, the case for getting out deserves a proper hearing.
Start with mental health, because the data here is hard to ignore. Exposure to new places, unfamiliar faces, and genuinely different experiences can shift something real in people dealing with depression or anxiety. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America reports over 70% of Americans feel stress or anxiety on a daily basis — much of it tied directly to work. One study found that even a four-day trip produces measurable improvements in well-being, with those effects lasting up to 45 days after you’re back home unpacking your suitcase. Four days. That’s a long weekend with Monday tacked on.
Not bad for a short escape.
Travel also does something subtler — and arguably just as valuable. It pulls people away from their screens. Researchers have connected excessive screen time to higher rates of depression and loneliness and lower self-esteem. Wandering through a new city, getting pleasantly lost on foot, and striking up conversation with a stranger at a café — these moments force a kind of digital detox that most people struggle to manufacture at home, surrounded by the same notifications and routines.
Then there’s what travel does for cultural understanding. Exploring new places, whether a neighboring state or a country you’ve never set foot in, opens real doors — to local history, living traditions, and a fuller picture of how the world actually works. About 40% of Americans said in 2024 that learning a new language was a personal goal. International travel is one of the fastest, most effective ways to make meaningful progress on that.
And food. Let’s talk about food for a second.
You can get decent Chinese, Mexican, Indian, or Italian cuisine in most American cities. Good versions, even. But eating those dishes as prepared by local cooks — using regional ingredients and following generations-old techniques in the country where the recipes actually originated — that’s an entirely different experience. Travelers who seek out those meals, made by local and indigenous artisans at their destination, come home with something that no restaurant stateside can replicate.
The benefits keep stacking up beyond that. Traveling is good for your health in less obvious ways too: creativity gets a jolt, communication skills sharpen, and organizational thinking improves. These aren’t soft, hand-wavy claims — they show up consistently in research on how novel environments affect the brain.
For families specifically, a quieter destination might be the smartest move of all. Coastal stretches, dense woodlands, mountain terrain — natural settings throughout the US and around the world carry well-documented effects on both mind and body. We’re talking sharper cognitive function, a stronger immune system, and reduced psychological stress. Studies on time spent in green spaces back this up repeatedly.
The catch? You don’t have to pick between nature and city. Research actually suggests a combination works best — just 20 minutes in a natural environment, followed by time exploring a historic downtown or local neighborhood, can deliver both benefits in a single afternoon. You’re not sacrificing one for the other.
So why aren’t more people going?
That question is worth sitting with — especially for the 11% who’ve never left their home state. The barriers are real: cost, time, obligations. But the return on investment, measured in mental clarity, reduced stress, expanded perspective, and genuine joy, is harder to argue against the more you look at the evidence.
For travel enthusiasts like Edward Granaghan, the takeaway is simple: new places can offer new perspective.