How to keep in touch with family and friends during lockdown
How to keep in touch with family and friends during lockdown
Zoom
Zoom offers a full-featured Basic Plan for free with unlimited meetings. You can try zoom for as long as you like – there is no trial period.
The Basic plan has a 40 minutes time limit on meetings with three or more total participants. You can even record the conversation if you were so inclined to document your period of self isolation to look back on in later years (on second thoughts, maybe not).
Available on mobile and desktop apps – it’s so easy to hop online with family and friends for a virtual chat (including text chat for sharing any files / links in the process) – perfect for keeping in touch during the COVID-19 lockdown and in normal circumstances too of course!
Skype
Skype is the perhaps the best known application for video calls (and online voice calling). It’s easy and reliable and a great choice for keeping in touch with loved ones at any time – pandemic or not!
Again, it’s free to use and you can have conversations with up to 50 people simultaneously (Skype raised this from 25 in April 2019) – if you know that many people who you’d want to video call with at the same time, we salute you.
A bonus feature with Skype is that you can even blur your background on your call (as shown in the animated gif below) – so no need to tidy the house before you get started!
To get started, head over to https://www.skype.com/en/free-conference-call/ and generate a meeting link, or download Skype to your desktop, mobile or tablet, create an account using your email address and invite friends to your first video chat.
Whatsapp is the Facebook-owned chat app that allows you to make calls via an internet connection (just make sure you have a strong Internet connection when placing or taking video calls.
To start a Whatsapp video chat, simply open a chat (or start a new group) and then click on the Video icon within the App.
Once you’ve started your video call, simply click on the add contacts button and select more contact to add.
Here’s a quick video to show you how:
Facetime
Facetime is Apple’s video chat offering and requires each participant to have iOS 12.1 or later installed on their device.
Facetime allows up to 32 people to video chat at once (it used to be just two people in 2018, so has come on leaps and bounds since then)
To Facetime you need an Apple device (you can use it on your iPad, iMac, iPhone or Macbook) and of course all of your contacts need to have an Apple device too.
Starting a call is easy. Simply open the app, enter a name, email address or phone number and click to add them to the chat. Once you’ve started a chat, all you have to do is drag the menu up and click +Add to add another person, and keep doing this until you have all 32 (or 2) of your friends or family involved. Magic!
Houseparty
Following its release in 2016, the app had fairly quickly been downloaded by 35 million users (40% of those being outside the US). According to the CEO of House Party, Sima Sistani, the app is “the next best thing to hanging out in real life”. Downloads had been dwindling however in recent years, however according to an article in The Guardian, downloads in March 2020 were the highest of the year – in line with the pandemic sweeping across the world.
The app itself offers more than the standard video chat / conferencing facilities and other functionalities of Zoom and Skype for example – as its aim is less for professional use and more for having fun! (Which of course Skype and Zoom can be used for too).
Please note – supervision of children wanting to use the app is key here, as it can be used to speak to strangers and has a number of potential pitfalls if used without being aware of the dangers – this according to Web Wise.
However, for quick gatherings to ease any boredom or disconnection you may feel during lockdown, it’s got some great things going for it – not least the games elements.
You can video chat and play games with up to eight people – from Head’s Up to Trivia and Quick Draw. House Party facilitates games more easily than other options available.
Simply sign up for a Houseparty account, add your contacts and start chatting. The app is available for iOS and Android as well as macOS. There’s also a Google Chrome extension so you can use it on PCs, too.
Once in the chat, click on the dice icon in the top right corner of your screen and select a game to play, as shown in the image below:
Gmail Family Account
This is a great idea not for video chat but for keeping in touch and keeping your children safe online in the process, by creating a Google Account for your child under 13 and managing it using the Family Link App.
With Google Accounts, children get access to Google products like Search, Chrome, and Gmail and you can set up basic digital ground rules to supervise them.
To set up a Google Family Account, start by downloading the Family Link App. You can get it on Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, allowing you to stay in the loop as your child or teen explores online and send emails amongst family members and groups you setup – all while controlling what your child sees online.
Ideas for things to do online with family and friends during the COVID-19 lockdown and beyond
Here’s some other ideas for having fun online during lockdown and to prevent feelings of disconnection or boredom as much as possible
Host a virtual dinner party
While we are in lockdown and can’t meet face to face with anyone outside our immediate household – this is a great fun way to stay social, with a virtual meal and chat.
All you have to do is set a time for everyone to be at their screen, with their dinner in front of them, and sit down to eat and enjoy each other’s company.
One of the suggested apps above will cater for your needs if you need to invite multiple people and who knows, if the first one goes well, you could make it a weekly event!
Play online games (after your virtual dinner party, perhaps!)
Games consoles
You may already have games consoles that will let you do this, from Playstations through to Nintendo Switches, Xbox or PCs – so if you both have the same console or device, why not set up a time to meet online and play? You could even start a league table to see who comes out on top overall at the end of each month.
Roblox
Another options is Roblox, which is a multiplayer online video game and game creation system, allowing users to design their own games and play a wide variety of different types of games created by other users. You can play on PCs and Macs, or iOS and Android devices alike. To get started go to https://www.roblox.com/ to sign up or find links to the Apple App Store and Android Play Stores, respectively.
Other ways to play
Alternatively, for more accessible fun (that doesn’t rely on having a console), why not try the Houseparty app? Or you could simply all get out a Scrabble board, chess board, Monopoly, or any game of your choice and move pieces and tiles around the boards for each player – so that you can all keep track of everyone’s moves and have fun as if you were playing on a single board, face to face!
Simpler still, you could play on a single board by pointing a webcam at the board and moving other people’s pieces for them as per their instructions over video chat.
Set up an online quiz
One person plays host each week and sends everyone else the quiz sheets and questions (maybe even a picture round) in advance of a live video call.
The quizmaster then reads the questions out and everyone has to email in their answers after each round. All this relies on is people being able to send an email and not cheat by looking on Google! Although the video call element should allow the host to keep a keen eye on any sly phone checking!
You could even ask each player to put two or three pounds in to play. If there’s enough of you, the winner could get a £20 gift card to spend on music / film etc in the Apple App Store or Android Play Store.
There we have it – some great solutions for staying connected and having fun with family and friends during the lockdown and self isolation period – and beyond of course!
Please feel free to share with family and friends – thanks for reading.