COVID-19: Five ways to spice up virtual relations with your friends

Keeping up with your buddies amid the social realities that have accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic, no doubt, requires conscious effort.

As the labour market increasingly embraces work-from-home arrangements like never before, being cut off from loved ones can be a challenge.

We meet a lot of people physically and virtually and leveraging on digital technologies to stay in touch can help keep the fire burning.

Here’s how tech can help you stay in touch

Video calls/meeting

Yes, as you probably expected, connecting with your friends, co-workers, and family using tools like Zoom and Google Duo remains one of the best ways to observe distancing without being distant.

While the former is renowned for its video conferencing services, the latter is a free video calling app that allows you to spend time face-to-face when you can’t be together in person.

With the feature ‘Knock, Knock’, Google Duo allows a preview of who is on the other side of the line before accepting the call. There is also Google Meet, a conferencing platform for video meetings.

Play online games

You can easily find your friends on Google Play Games; where you and your cronies, outside work, can compete on leaderboards; compare achievements, and find new games together.

On the Google Play Games app, whether it’s a puzzle or an action game, the ‘Instant Play’ feature allows you to play your next favourite game without having to install anything.

Share videos

You could also stay in touch by sharing entertaining and educational YouTube videos. Simply go to the preferred platform’s channel, copy the URL, and paste it wherever you want to share it.

Beyond learning, engaging in this routine with your friends and family can become a fun and exciting activity; creates a longlasting bond; and offer you new topics about which to discuss.

Keep track of events

Well, Google Calendar can quickly schedule meetings and events with friends, family, and co-workers. The Google Meet link available in your calendar can be used to host virtual meetings.

You can share your calendar with others so they can find your schedule and fit in with theirs. While this is used for work purposes, it is also a good tool that reminds you of planned events.

Share photos

How about seizing this opportunity to share throwback photographs you’ve been hiding away back in high school; college? Using Google Photos, pictures you take are saved automatically.

These can be shared privately and securely with those you care about so you can relive happy memories. You can make collages, movies, or animations of your images and share them.

Hundreds of photos can be shared at once with shareable links and in high quality too so long as the persons you intend sharing photos with must also have a Gmail account to their name.