How Are Students Keeping in Touch With Their Friends?
Social distancing can make it difficult to stay in touch with friends, as hanging out in the lounges, lunchroom, and hallways is simply not compatible with school online. Seeing your friends in Zoom classes is not the same as seeing them in person. How have students been dealing with the social struggles that come along with social distancing?
To overcome the challenges of quarantine, students have found many ways to stay connected. In a poll, students expressed the main ways they keep in touch with friends. Most students said that they call, text, and FaceTime their friends almost every day. Additionally, social media has been a major tool in staying connected with friends. Students said that Snapchat has helped keep them connected; a silly picture of a friend can be comforting and make this unstable time feel closer to normalcy. Some students added that Instagram has helped them stay in touch through sharing funny posts and memes with friends. Students also use TikTok to stay updated on their friends’ lives and to see short clips of random activities their friends have been doing. In addition, many students have been playing video games with one another. Zoom has played a tremendous role in keeping people connected. In addition to having classes over Zoom, many students use Zoom to simply talk to their friends and catch up. In order to stay fit and also talk to friends, many students workout together while on FaceTime.
A new feature that has become popular during this period of social distancing is Netflix Party. Netflix Party is a Chrome extension that allows people to watch Netflix with friends online with a group chat alongside real-time viewings of the same show. Many students have said that they watch movies and shows with their friends using Netflix Party. In order to stay close with friends, some students have even been shipping presents, such as home-made bracelets, to their friends’ houses. All in all, students at Ramaz have thoroughly adapted to this new situation and found creative ways to be social while social distancing.
