Great Ways To Stay Connected With Friends During Quarantine
If you’re looking for great ways to stay connected with friends during quarantine, there are so many more options for you in 2021 than were available previously. More technological options are being created all the time across social media, computer and smart device applications, and in the field of gaming. So you can keep close and have continued connection and conversation with friends and loved ones when stuck indoors, here are some great ways to stay connected with friends during quarantine you should try.
Social Media
Joining social media is already a fantastic way to connect and reconnect with people. You can search for and find on Facebook, for example, many old friends and acquaintances you wish to reconnect with. Facebook is a great way to find people you know and want to talk to if you don’t necessarily already have their information, to see what they have been doing in life through their photos and posts. Twitter can also work well in this way.
These are great ways to stay connected with friends during quarantine by posting your words, ideas, interests, and hobbies as well as photos of yourself, acquaintances, and activities. These things posted and shared by others can then be viewed by you. These among other social media networks can keep multiple people sharing and connecting regardless of where they are, including extensive time indoors away from them physically as you would have previously been more able and desirous of.
Group Chatting
Social media networks also have another great feature to help you stay connected than posts and photos called a group chat. Group chats you can do on your smartphone, or on social media, such as on Facebook or Snapchat allow you to have a single line of conversation between many different people at the same time. These can notify all the connected individuals and allow them to respond to all messages and post their own.
There can be a lot of people to a single chat with some difference depending on the application. You can have around 20-30 people on iPhones and iPads through your messages app, around 30 on an Instagram group chat, or reportedly upwards of 100 on a Facebook Messenger group chat. You can also take and post videos on many of these options. Snapchat also allows you to post with different types of photo backgrounds and funny or cute self appearances and facial features such as hearts, glasses, animal ears, or a Frankenstein face for example.
Video Chatting
For another great way to stay connected with friends during quarantine, you can try another, even more direct method of communication and conversation with video chats and chatting. These applications include Zoom, Skype, and FaceTime. With these applications, you are able to view each other through your phone, computer, or tablet camera lenses in real-time. This provides an even closer connection as it seemingly puts you in the same space, speaking and responding immediately and able to look at each other as you do.
Video chatting is a really special method of seemingly staying together, also here with large group capability on many applications as well as if a couple people are able to be in the same space and video in together. Video chatting is nice for when you may be missing a friend or family gathering, holiday, or special event such as a birthday or anniversary. Here, for example, you are able to open each other’s gifts and show yourself opening for the other person or people such as on Christmas. You are able to cook and eat with each other on Thanksgiving.
Online Gaming
Applications that allow you to play games while chatting and streaming live are also great ways to stay connected with friends during quarantine. These applications have grown greatly in popularity, diversity, and uses since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak far past what they were before. They allow you to play with other people you desire and also to meet and connect with new people, making new friends a continued possibility even from remote locations.
Applications that have this capability include Discord and Twitch among them. These types of applications have endless games of various types that can be played and streamed during play for open viewing and correspondence. This can also be interesting by allowing different live streamers, including YouTubers, celebrities, and public authority figures to play and connect with other people and the public at large and be connected with them in newfound ways.
Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing is a specific game example that itself allows players to visit other people’s islands where a player does different activities and builds. Each person’s houses and creations can be viewed and online chats are capable. You can also give gifts to help other players in their game goals and toward their built or grown creations.
YouTube
YouTube is another very popular means of connecting and staying connected with videos and online gaming. People can post and connect at various experience levels and notoriety and are able to post videos of endless content and topics. This includes but can go past gaming and showing their gameplay for community comment and connection.
Less Online
If you have little or inconsistent availability of and access to the internet and/or wifi, there are also other options for great ways to stay connected with friends during quarantine. Phone calls in general are nice for real-time conversation without visual access to one another. Letter writing is also a nice, more personable option that requires little. Letter writing is also a greatly inexpensive, more available, and easily done option. It is a beautiful art form that allows people who have done little of it in their life to have a new experience.
With a camera or recording device, you can take photos and videos if you have limited online access or are without a smart device. These can be uploaded to a computer and posted when able. You simply remove the SD card, connect the SD card to a computer, convert the photos or videos to digital files through this connection, and upload and share these photos and videos from there. There is increasing access to public computers for this. Just be sure to protect yourself with a mask worn for the time you are in the public space or library.
