Regularly, social media often has both good sides and bad sides. We often view it as only a ‘snapshot’ of people’s real lives and often ones that are highly curated to leave out the bad aspects. Although I agree that this still occurs, I have seen a different type of social interaction take place through social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to social distancing, many of us have been missing our daily interactions with friends and family, those who make us feel normal on a day to day basis. Therefore, many of us have turned to electronic forms of communication to help us stay connected with those we love. Therefore today I wanted to talk about some of my favourite ways that I have seen people staying close with each other during this scary and lonely time and the positive impact I believe it has had.
Zoom
Zoom is something that I had frequently used for online classes but has made a serious boom with people in my generation after social distancing began. I have been able to call my friends from home in a large group and play card games, and online games such as ‘Quiplash!’. Being able to see everyone’s face and hear everyone’s voice while playing these games has helped me to feel a little bit more ‘normal’ as it is something that we would do together face to face any other time. I think it has been amazing to see everyone being able to still interact in group settings with their friends, while still being within social distancing recommendations.
Although many of the challenges people are doing on Instagram seem silly, it is still important to recognize how they bring people together. Recently, I was tagged in a challenge run by my camp by one of my old camp friends and thinking of those memories was really relaxing in a time that feels so stressful. Even being able to simply see some of my friends’ posts on Instagram and being able to interact with them is strangely better than it was before.
YouTube
My camp has recently been using YouTube as a way to bring people from the camp community together. They created two virtual camp events, one being a virtual ‘campfire’ so that members of the camp community could all come together at a designated time and sing campfire songs together with their families and friends. It was so well received by the camp community, and helped everyone feel connected to others who are currently campers, and alumni too! Otherwise, YouTube has been an escape for me getting to watch some of my favourite YouTubers videos and tuning out much of the bad news that is consistently on other social media platforms.
TikTok
I never knew that a couple of months ago I would be obsessed with TikTok, but here we are. I now use TikTok, almost as much as I used Vine back in 2014. With many young people like myself having not many other things to do because of social distancing, many people have turned to making TikToks. This means there is plenty of content made mainly by other young people that appeals to young people. I have learned about so many new crafts, recipes, products and many other things that I can be doing or using during my time in social isolation. Even things as simple as the cute animal content on the app have helped cheer me up when I am feeling down.
Video Games
Although this is something I have not personally been able to partake in (no Animal Crossing new horizons yet) many of my friends have used their video game consoles to stay connected with each other. Through online gaming, people are able to talk to each other through their headset while playing the same game together. I have seen people use Animal Crossing on the switch to visit each other’s island and be able to interact with each other that way. Finally, even through silly games like Club Penguin people have been able to connect with each other in a different way than just through texting.
Although many of these media platforms are used when not practicing social distancing, I believe that during this time they have been of utmost importance in keeping all of us connected. I think after all of this is over, we will have a newfound appreciation for being able to see the people we care about face to face, but for now, I think that we have collectively been able to do well in keeping connected in different ways.