If you’re a very social person, then the social distancing from COVID-19 (which is around at the time this is being written) might have hit you especially hard. One of the tactics of social distancing is changing from brick-and-mortar school to virtual school.
You may be joining a virtual school program because of COVID-19, or for some other reason. Regardless, to some, changing to virtual school may seem daunting, especially when it comes to your social life.
However, there’s really not much to fear from it. There can actually be a ton of benefits from virtual schooling, but that’s for another article. Let’s talk about social life and virtual schooling.
How to keep your current friends
This may seem like a challenge to some of you. After all, you probably made a lot of your friends from going to school. After seeing them almost every day at school, maybe you didn’t think about what would happen when that was over.
It’s going to happen regardless of whether you move to virtual schooling or not. You could move into the workforce, and unless you decide to work at the same company with them, you probably won’t see your friends everyday. Or, maybe you go to college—different colleges, perhaps—and then to the workforce. It’s just something that’s going to happen: There will come a point in your life where you won’t see your friends everyday.
That may seem frightening, but don’t let it be. With all the advances in technology, it’s easy to keep in touch with your friends. You can talk to them via phone call, text message, or some other form of social media. Maybe you already do that. If so, great! Keep doing that! If not, maybe you should start.
If you go to the same school, you probably have a standard, or standard-ish, email address for everyone across the school. They might even be in your contacts list without you knowing it. You can try to send them an email asking for some form of contact that you can use to keep in touch with them.
Or, depending on how much you’re on social media, and how much your friends are, the social media platform you’re on might recommend you them as someone to add because you go to the same school or whatnot. Sometimes, this can be rather unsettling that they have that much information and such about you, and sometimes it can be helpful. It’s up to you to decide how much you want to put out there and how much you trust the platform(s).
Anyway, once you have their contact information, just keep in touch with them! Message them every now and then catch up. Call them, if you can. Maybe ask them if they’d like to hang out in person. For some of you, this may seem like a no-brainer. For others, perhaps not. Don’t let virtual school be the end of your current friendships. Technology is out there for stuff like this, use it!
How to make new friends
This part can be a little tougher. However, because of the way you will (probably) make friends from virtual school, you might have even more in common with the new friends you make than you would have otherwise. Some of these might be obvious to you, others might not.
Extracurricular activities
Maybe you’re taking some kind of club (like a chess club or debate or something) or extra, physical class. Maybe a sport. Either way, there’s a ton of extracurricular activities out there that aren’t a part of the school.
At the time of writing this, social distancing and COVID-19 are still a thing, so perhaps you can’t do this yet, but if virtual school becomes the new norm, then this may be worth keeping in mind. Just go find an extracurricular activity that you can meet people at and make friends there.
Social gatherings
Gatherings are great for making new friends. There may be some social gatherings near you. A couple of examples of these would be a youth group or, if you’re of age, a bar. Consider trying to find places like these and hanging out. Then you can go out and meet some new people and make some friends.
Prom and other school events
Some people might be worried about prom and other school events like that. It can be a pretty big part of some schools, after all. For those that are worried, quit worrying. There’s always something that can be done. Some virtual schools actually orchestrate their own prom or dances. Others don’t.
For those that don’t, then you can always try to do your own thing, or find a different one to go to. Maybe you have a friend at a school that has dances and the like. Maybe you could go there.
Or, you could just grab a couple friends and go hang out. If that’s all you go to the school events for—to hang out with friends—then you can just do your own thing with your friends. You don’t have to be bound to school events in order to hang out with your friends. Virtual school offers a ton of freedom. Use it!
