For hundreds of thousands of young people across the UK, taking a gap year is a highly exciting opportunity to see the world and expand one’s horizons before entering the intimidating world of higher education and beyond. We all know at least one friend who has ‘found themself’ in Southeast Asia or saved up healthy sums of money working at their local cafe. Full of exciting opportunities for fun and experience, taking one almost seems to be a no-brainer. However, in 2025, are gap years really ‘all that?’
The travelling opportunities that taking a gap year affords are unparalleled. Finally, you are released from the tight constraints of school holidays, free to head off to some far corner of the globe for as long as you can afford. The most popular destinations for gap year travellers are Southeast Asia and South America, the former especially so. It’s easy to see why: Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia offer some of the most breathtaking scenery and exhilarating experiences for young people anywhere. One first-year student, fresh off his gap year, describes his experience of the Ha Giang Loop, a multiple-day motorbike journey through stunning mountain scenery in North Vietnam that has become a staple of the Southeast Asia traveller’s itinerary, as “probably the best few days of [his] life.”
However, in the age of social media and travel influencers, many gap year travellers end up doing the exact same things in the exact same places. If you choose to spend a significant amount of time in Southeast Asia on your year off, you are almost guaranteed to meet someone you know from home on a similar journey. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, scrolling through your fellow travellers’ Instagram and seeing the same waterfall, beach and restaurant that you just visited can impede upon any sense of adventure, especially in comparison to our parents’ generation who set off without a mobile phone or online bookings.
Social media has also had the effect of excessively romanticising the gap year travelling experience. You’re unlikely to see your friends posting about the bedbugs that they picked up at a one-euro-per-night hostel or the many genuinely scary experiences that people have with scammers or other sinisterly-intentioned people.
Aside from the travel opportunities, gap years allow students to earn a bit of money and get a taste of the working world before coming to university. Some choose to work in retail or hospitality, while others gain valuable career experience through the dozens of internship programmes available in the UK and abroad.
Whatever experiences people have in their gap year, many report that they feel they have come to university with an elevated sense of confidence and maturity as a result. Whether it be a stronger ability to live independently and look after themselves or greater social confidence, a year in the real world generally leaves young people arriving at university feeling more prepared and perhaps more well-adjusted than others who have come straight from school. That being said, some gap year students have found that being surrounded by peers one or even two years younger than them to be a mixed experience. One 19-year-old fresher stated that she “didn’t expect there to be such a difference in maturity” as a result of just one year.
Despite a few negatives, it’s easy to see why so many students choose to take gap years. However, do the majority actually have the choice? A study conducted by the Government in 2012 found that students on a gap year were far more likely to have come from “families of higher socio-economic status.” Many young people don’t feel they can consider the high costs of travelling abroad, or that they have the freedom to “mess around” for an extra year when they could be gaining a valuable degree at university. Certainly, a year of frivolous travel seems to be generally reserved for those more well-off who can rely, at least partially, upon their parents for funding. However, now more than ever, there are a plethora of paid internships, training programmes, and apprenticeships available that make taking a gap year viable to many more people of varied backgrounds. As a result, more and more people can come to university armed with the strengths that people seem to gain from their year out.
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