Grab your whipped coffee and turn on your camera. Zoom, FaceTime, and texting were big ways to communicate with people outside of your home.

During quarantine many relationships changed, certain friends would reach out to you and others wouldn’t.
The distance between friends and family showed who was thinking of you.

“Under the circumstances, it made some of my friendships stronger and some weaker. I lost some friends due to the fact that we weren’t seeing each other,” Grippe said.

Since communication was limited to the internet, it made it easier for some students to get used to reaching out to people.

“It made me realize if you need help or have a question you can always send an email,” Grippe said. “We were kind of forced to reach out, it stuck with me all throughout high school.”

Social media content was being produced and consumed every hour of every day to cure everyone’s boredom.
Grippe said she would go on TikTok and FaceTime with her friends to keep herself busy.

Instagram was the go-to app when you wanted to see what your friends were up to and how they were doing.

“Instagram was how people perceived your life and I feel like that carried over to now,” Grippe said. “My screen time average was probably 10 hours or something ridiculous.”

Quarantine was when the millennials who called TikTok cringe secretly downloaded the app. TikTok influenced the way short-form media was made and consumed; you could get lost for hours with the endless scrolling.

People memorized dances, made cloud bread, sang to Megan Thee Stallion, and content creators gained millions of followers, making more money than a full-time job.

“Everyone was producing content. That’s when everyone got famous because that’s all people would do, “ said Grippe.

Not only was social media extremely popular but so was the world of online shopping. There were Amazon workers throwing packages on doorsteps and girls buying 20 different variations of the same product, who cares if we didn’t have toilet paper or water? Online shopping was more fun to do.

“Everything you could’ve wanted to shop for was online,” Grippe said.

Social media and online shopping weren’t the only ways students spent their time, playing games with friends was a fun and easy way to hang out with your friends without actually being with them.

Popular games like Minecraft, Roblox, and especially Among Us had people yelling at an overheated screen.

“Among us was by far my favorite game to play during quarantine,” senior Johnathan Smith said. “I loved how that game allowed you to lie to your friends which is something you wouldn’t normally do in real life.”

Although quarantine was a time of isolation, it was also fun and full of new experiences. “I think anyone who’s played can agree that the feeling you get when winning as the imposter is one that you can’t find anywhere else,” Smith said.

It was a time when calling your friends for hours and playing a game where people shouted “sus” was normal.

Lulu Gomez and Ruby Spilkoman contributed to this piece