Can You Recreate Socializing in School Online

For most of us, especially those in younger generations, we likely interact with people on social media as much as we do face-to-face communication, if not even more. It’s both a blessing and a curse to constantly have access to those we care about, and instead of having to arrange plans to meet up with someone to see them, they can simply be a text message or phone call away.

However, there’s something about meeting up in person and talking face-to-face that social media simply can’t recreate. COVID has proved this as our in-person interactions have drastically decreased but our screen time tells us that we have spent hours upon hours on social media apps every week. Your child may have spent hours texting friends before quarantining, but when it starts substituting going out to grab food with them, for example, it just doesn’t feel as satisfying.

Children who are going back to school over the next few weeks might be feeling this more than ever. No matter what your child’s school district or university’s plan is, there’s a really high chance that your interactions with your peers are going to be remarkably different. They probably aren’t going to be seeing their friends everyday in the classes that they’re excited to share together or bonding with teammates if they’re on a sports team.

We can’t give the perfect advice about how to recreate school interactions online – it’s something that’s never really happened before. How do you take the more fun parts about school, like meeting up at a friend’s locker or studying in the common areas of a dorm, and recreate them virtually? How can you distinguish that from how you usually interact with friends on social media?

With all of this considered, we want to help remind you that getting an education is vital, but there are so many other factors that make school important for your child. Sleepily complaining about classes first thing in the morning and rushing to finish a homework assignment with their friends in the cafeteria as chaos ensues around them. In a way, these social interactions are not just helpful towards their development, but they also help provide some sort of stress relief with the anxieties that come with school. Socializing during school hours – even basic interactions like saying “hi” to a classmate or teacher in the hallway – can boost moods and make students feel less alone. The absence of that, no matter how small these interactions are, can have a severe effect if school becomes just class time with no casual socialization.

So while we don’t have any solutions on how to really recreate these social settings, we hope that the transition comes with opportunities for your child to talk to your friends, classmates, and teachers in that more relaxed, casual setting. It can be as silly as changing the background on Zoom to your child’s school hallway when you talk to the friends from school that you interact with on a daily basis, or maybe even responding to a classmate’s story that they follow but don’t usually talk to.


Have you talked to your child about how they feel about going back to school? How can they recreate the parts that they miss?

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