An unfortunate, but very important part of this pandemic is limiting interaction with other people to keep the likelihood of exposure low. It can suck, especially when you’re a college student, but it’s so important to keep yourself and everyone around you safe. I miss my friends a lot, and not seeing them in person can feel isolating, but I’ve found some safe activities that can be done with friends to make this time feel less alone.
- Among Us on Zoom.
-
This is something I recently did with friends and it was so much fun. Among Us is a game that has recently blown up all over the internet and everyone (even representatives) is playing it. In the game, there are up to 10 total players and one to three of the players can be “imposters” who kill off other players. The goal of the game if you’re an imposter is to kill as many crewmates (the other players) without getting caught, while the goal of the game, if you’re a crewmate, is to figure out who the imposter(s) is before they kill too many people. Get up to 10 of your closest friends on a Zoom call, have someone create a private room on Among Us and share the code with everyone. The best way to play the game is to stay muted unless someone calls a meeting or reports a murder so that there aren’t any giveaways of who the imposter is. During those meetings though, everyone should have their camera and mic on to talk about who’s sus and what happened. You could easily play this for hours, and I highly recommend it.
- Netflix Party.
-
This is a highly popular idea, and I’ve done this multiple times by now, but it’s honestly so fun. Netflix Party is essentially a platform where multiple people can hop onto a stream of a movie on Netflix and watch it simultaneously, there’s even a chat feature if you wanna type out messages during the movie. If you don’t already, make sure to have Google Chrome and go to this site to download Netflix Party as an extension. An alternative idea to this is using Zoom and screen sharing while watching a movie. The only issue with this version is that sometimes the quality of the movie goes down significantly since it’s being streamed through Zoom.
- Presentation and Zoom.
-
I’ve seen this done quite a few times on TikTok and it seemed like a lot of fun, so I decided to do it with my friends. It was really entertaining and informative, and if it’s something you and your friends would be into, I would definitely recommend it. The concept of this hangout is that everyone puts together presentations on whatever topic they care about — it can be about movies, ex-partners, something you’re learning about in classes, whatever — and then you all Zoom to present them.
- Yoga on Zoom.
-
This is actually something I did with Her Campus at UMKC and really enjoyed. The event was extremely relaxing and chill. I plan on doing it again with my friends outside of Her Campus at UMKC. This hangout idea can go one of two ways: either one of the friends is really good at yoga and knows what they’re doing so they lead the entire group, or you look up a beginner yoga video on YouTube and screen share for everyone.
I hope that the ideas I presented in this article can bring you and your friends together. Right now is a really hard time, but you don’t have to go through it alone. There are so many ways to keep in touch with friends and hang out with them while staying safe. I have found that even just doing a mass FaceTime with my friends and catching up on life can be meaningful and comfortable, so don’t be afraid to try something different or even change up the ideas I’ve given you.