As you get older it can become harder to stay connected with some of your friends. Going to uni, starting a new job, going away for a gap year and plenty more reasons can be the cause of friendships to drift apart.
But there’s ways to stay in touch online!
Loads of apps now allow you to keep in touch with friends and even make your own little (or big) communities.
What Apps Should I Use?
That ultimately depends on what you’re looking for. Take a look at the examples below and see what would work best, you might even be using them already!
Remember most apps that allow you to connect and engage with others online are for those over the age of 13.
WhatsApp is a popular messaging app for staying in touch with friends and family, all you need to get chatting on it is the person’s phone number. You can easily make a group chat with all your friends here, it’s likely some of your friends are already using it to speak to others.
While WhatsApp does have the option for creating communities, it is typically used by larger companies to share big announcements. This means there isn’t usually as much of an opportunity to chat with others and make new friends but it will allow you to stay up to date with the latest news of your favourite brands!
Discord
While Discord was originally used for chatting while playing games online, it now has features that are used by various different communities to share content about their hobbies and interests, as well as making new friends.
Most Discord communities will have several different chats for discussing certain topics. For example one group might have a general chat, a chat for stuff related to games and a chat for memes. You can also create multiple voice chats, which can let multiple friend groups chat separately at the same time.
You’ll find that some communities can be a lot larger with hundreds or even thousands or members! If you join one of these, you’ll likely find that they will have plenty more chats and voice chats to keep the large amount of members spread out. If you join one of these groups and get involved in discussions you’ll probably make friends very quickly, just remember if someone sends you a friend request to not give away any personal information to strangers.
If you’re looking to connect and engage in discussions around topics you have a particular interest in, Reddit might be what you’re looking for. While it’s not quite the same as Discord where you can join voice chats, you can still share your opinions and go into deep discussion in the comments of posts.
Remember, if you make any friends and add each other on other apps to always stay safe and don’t give away any personal information to people you don’t know.
What If I Want To Manage My Own Friend Group/Online Community?
Creating your own community for friends can be a great idea, it can be a chance to bring people back together that haven’t connected in a while. If your ambitions are even larger and you’re thinking about creating a community for people in your local area or with similar interests, then you may want to think about using some of these tips and features if they’re available.
- Rules (Community Onboarding) – Apps like Discord allow you to welcome new members to your community and encourage them to read a selection of rules. This is more fun than it sounds as you can also add in the options to personalise their account for this specific channel. This is typically for larger communities but it might be worth exploring, find out more about Community Onboarding on Discord here.
- Mods (Moderators) – You can’t be around all the time to manage your community. Most community apps will allow you to assign moderators, these ‘mods’ can be given certain permissions over other members so they can warn, mute and even ban people. It’s likely you won’t need any mods if you’re just a small group of friends but if you’re in a larger group it can be helpful for someone to be on hand to deal with situations. Mods shouldn’t abuse their power either, and should only ban and mute people based on the community rules.
- Make use of tools – All of the apps above will have certain unique features. Creating polls, running events & reminders, giving select members unique roles… remember there is no harm in experimenting!
Now all that’s left for you is to go out and explore what apps work for you!