Online Activities to Stay Connected with Friends during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Social distancing has made it much harder for us to keep in touch with our friends and family. Students have been using programs such as Zoom, FaceTime and Google Hangouts to stay connected. This works, but many students find that this can become pretty boring and repetitive. If this is the case for you, don’t worry! Here are some programs and ideas you can use to stay entertained with your friends. 

Houseparty: A video calling app that allows you to join the call whenever you want! Houseparty also has tons of built-in games you can play with friends and video effects for you to use.

Netflix Party: This browser extension allows you to watch Netflix movies and T.V. shows with your friends in real-time. 

Squad: This is an app where you can watch YouTube, TikTok and share what is on your screen with up to 9 people. 

Book Club: If you like to read, start a virtual book club. Assign a book and number of pages to read every couple of days. After you read, make a video call with your friends and discuss the book. 

Cupcake Wars: Do you like to bake? If so, try making a virtual cooking competition with your friends. Start a video call and try to see who can make the best cupcakes in 30 minutes.

Play HORSE: ESPN recently hosted a HORSE tournament, a bracket of 8 players was made. They did video calls with the players and battled to see who would win. Trying doing this with 1, 4, or even 20 other people. 

Lip Sync Battles: Based on the show “Lip Sync Battles”, challenge your friends to create dance routines and lip sync to popular songs.

Virtual Game Night: Have a video call with friends and play trivia, Scattergories or other games. There are also some websites where you can play popular games such as Uno, Clue, and Battleship online with your friends.