It’s hard to keep in touch with close friends and family who live hundreds of miles away, especially while managing a busy schedule. Although I try to keep in touch often, I’ve found some great alternatives to maintaining relationships with far-flung friends and family, from sending out mini podcasts to starting a virtual book club.
Sharing photos
Sharing photos is one of the best ways to keep in touch with far-flung friends and family. Since they aren’t there to experience every moment of my life, I love sending pictures of new decor I put up, places I’ve visited, cute pictures of pets, and more.
My current photo-sharing app of choice is Locket, which works just like Snapchat. However, its widget feature for your home screen, which shows new photos as they arrive, is one of the reasons I ditched Snapchat for Locket.
I’m in a group with two of my best friends, which allows us to share photos with short captions. The app also has the option to react to photos and send messages, where I can react directly to the photo.
Sending Voice Notes
Sometimes, the story I’m excited to share is too long to type as text. My friends and I often send long-form voice memos to update each other about important parts of our day, exciting job opportunities, or the latest celebrity gossip. It’s a great excuse to hear my friends’ voices and have more in-depth conversations than just texting.
Designed directly for this purpose is an app called Cappuccino, available on iOS and Android. Cappuccino allows you to create mini podcasts with life updates and any other information you need that you can send to your friends. Each little “bean” (audio clip) you send will be added to your friends’ Cappuccino, which will be compiled and sent to them daily. While this is a great option, sending a voice memo over iMessage also works.
Watching Shows and Movies
Teleparty lets you host watch parties with friends and family. I love watching reality TV with my friends because it’s more fun as a group, so I host watch nights for the latest episodes of The Bachelor franchise. You can connect your accounts to Netflix, Max, YouTube, Hulu, and more!
Teleparty has a chat bar where you can send messages to your friends while watching live, as well as more options to pause and rewind for a snack break or any other interruption. You can download Teleparty as an extension on your browser or get the app on iOS and Android.
Hosting a Virtual Book Club
My friends and I also started a book club a year ago with the help of the Fable app. This amazing reading tracker also lets you start public and private book clubs, which break down books for discussion by chapter. We usually give each other about three weeks to finish the book, adding commentary in the app as we go.
There’s a final review section that shows what rating each club member gave the book (out of five stars) and what their final review is. We also schedule a video call to discuss our thoughts on the book, which is largely based on our comments written on Fable. Fable is also a great book tracker, which is why I quit Goodreads and now track my books on Fable.
Setting up audio and video calls
Although it might seem like the easiest option, calling far-flung friends and family always lifts my mood. It can be challenging to find a time when everyone is available to chat, but even if it’s just a short phone call, it makes a difference.
I try to video call my far-flung friends at least twice a month and my family once a week. I especially love video chatting with FaceTime so I can see my loved ones, their pets, and any other visual components like new furniture, art projects, and more.