50 years ago, it was rare for a family to be spread out across the four corners of the earth. Today, however, it’s becoming a lot more common.
Children graduate college and spend a year teaching in Japan; our parents retire and decide to fulfill a lifelong dream of living in Paris. Even our high-schoolers are becoming more and more comfortable with looking at colleges and universities across the country or even abroad.
While this can be hard on families, the good news is that technology has made it easier than ever to stay in touch, and to maintain strong, rich relationships with the ones we love. If you find yourself struggling to find meaningful ways to show your faraway loved ones you care, take a look at this list.
Use your social media cues to spur real-life action
You know how Facebook tells you your friends’ birthdays? An easy response to that is to write “Happy birthday!” on your friend’s wall and call it a day. It’s nice for someone to get that acknowledgement, of course, but ultimately it’s not terribly meaningful.
A nicer gesture is to write someone a personal message, whether through Facebook or email. But the best thing to do is to take that virtual reminder as an opportunity to go buy a birthday card and stick it in the mail.
It sounds like such an easy thing to do, but most of us seem to keep our social media and real-life lives rather separate. This same principle can be applied to all kinds of situations – when you see a friend or family member post a status update about feeling overwhelmed or sad, give them a phone call or send a little note.
It’s these sorts of sincere, thoughtful gestures that can really enrich your relationships, and help you stay close and connected no matter how far apart you are.
Use the Nixplay app to send friends and family photos as they happen
One of the best things about smartphone photos is that you can share them with loved ones immediately, making them feel like they’re a part of the moment.
With the Nixplay app, you can send photos to your loved ones just as quickly, except that instead of showing up on your mom’s or grandmother’s little smartphone screen, they’ll greet her on her Nixplay WiFi Cloud frame.
Just think what a nice surprise that will make when she walks into the room and sees the photo from your son’s championship soccer match, which he won just minutes ago, framed so beautifully.
Plan a fun virtual activity together.
No one said staying in touch had to involve nothing but Skype conversations and texting.
Instead, get creative and come up with a fun, virtual activity to do with your loved ones. If you’re a mom or dad who travels for business, set up a scavenger hunt for your kids before you leave. You can schedule a time for them to start it, and feed them clues via FaceTime, Skype, or by sending photos. When they find the objects, have them send you a picture of them with the object before getting the next clue.
If it’s a dear friend you’re missing, try scheduling virtual versions of events you would ordinarily do together – a movie night, for example, or even a wedding or baby shower.
You may feel a little silly at first turning on Google Hangouts so you can chat with your bestie while watching the Golden Globes, but give it a few minutes and you’ll be amazed at how natural you’ll feel.
Being away from friends and family is difficult, but there are lots of ways to make the distance feel a little less daunting. For more on staying in touch with loved ones, read our post “How the Nixplay App Can Keep Your Family Connected.”
Bea is Nixplay’s Social Media Manager. She enjoys drinking coffee, reading about wars, and writing stories. Send her a message at beatrice.bisais@nixplay.com.