For our final installment in this column, I thought it would be good to talk about something that no matter how many walks you go on or how perfect your schedule is, we are all going through. It’s simple, really: we are all isolated from our friends and relatives, we have been for a long time and we will continue to be for even longer! It’s been over two months since schools in Chapel Hill were closed, and it’s going to be many more before we’re allowed back together.
So. How can we deal with isolation? While sure, many of us have families that ensure we are anything but alone, everyone in the world is cut off from friends and relatives. We all have to deal with Zoom calls and letters and texts for communication, but nothing replaces talking face-to-face. Having said that, here is my perspective on replacing face-to-face communication while in our homes and coping with a lack of it.
The best thing that we can do while stuck at home is to talk to people. It doesn’t really matter who! Talk with a friend over a video conference, talk to our family members who drive us up the wall, talk to our dogs and cats. Whatever we do, we shouldn’t stay in our rooms all day and avoid human contact. It might be teenagers’ instincts right now, but isolating while already in isolation will make us all feel much more alone than we would be in the company of other humans.
According to Psychology Today, an important way to improve or stabilize our mental health during quarantine is to “decrease boredom and improve communication. Remaining connected to one’s social network—even remotely—helps guard against immediate anxiety and long-lasting distress.”
My advice for what to do during this time amounts to this: talk to others! In order to do that, here are ideas for connection during quarantine.
Try writing letters to friends. Writing letters to a friend is a fun and unique experience, as my pen pal, sophomore Abbey Benzinger can attest.
“It’s cool to see what it’s like to answer and reply by actually writing [letters] out and answering each others’ questions,” Benzinger said. “It’s also nice because you actually have time to think out what you want to say, too, instead of immediately having to say the first thing that comes to mind.”
Another great resource for connection are video calls. They’re probably the closest thing we can get to real human socialization: Houseparty is a video calling app built for phones specifically, and lets you play games like Heads Up in the app. Zoom is a video calling app that’s able to host more people, and lets you share screens and have weird backgrounds. Discord lets you create servers for friend groups and is easily the best app out there for people who want to play video games together.
Finally, remember that our friends want to talk to us too. Everybody around the world and in our communities are going through the same thing. We all have a deep social need that we aren’t getting. Even if you might think that your friends won’t want to talk, they probably do. Just ask.
Illustration courtesy of Carlos PX/payforlayers.com
