Quiz 1: How friendships thrived in video games during the pandemic

Hugh-Jay Yu lives alone on a college campus without in-person classes, and hardly ever sees his friends in person. Still, he manages to have an impressively active social life.

Every night between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m., the 19-year-old college sophomore hangs out with a group of friends on the app Discord. Usually around six to eight people are logged in at any given time. The games they play together help everyone bond, Yu said.

Building and maintaining friendships can be tricky even when there's no pandemic. However, months of isolation have limited and changed how people interact with their friends and moved many relationships online.

New friendships have been born, while others have struggled or were put on pause.

Video games especially have become an important way to connect people  to friends they aren't able to see. Combined with phone calls, texts and chat tools, gaming is giving people a way to share fun experiences with one another when real life is hard. They also become a way to discuss the harder topics, such as depression.

Playing Games Serves A Valuable Purpose

Playing games is serving a valuable purpose, said Natalie Pennington. She is a professor of communications at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Friendships help people feel that they belong, that they are part of something, Pennington said. People aren't supposed to be isolated, and they need connections. Yet a recent study found that not all online interactions with friends are equal. After seeing people in person, phone calls were the best at decreasing anxiety. Yet Zoom calls actually increased stress, perhaps because of the energy it requires to see and be seen on video.

People who played more video games online also reported higher levels of stress.

Video games have long been social, even when it was just people playing side by side on the same sofa. Apps make socializing even easier.

Video games are a popular hobby, and this is true across age groups and genders. A total of 52 percent of regular gamers were men and 48 percent were women, according to a 2017 Pew survey. 

None of the players we spoke with use games as their only connection to other people. Rather, they combine games with other forms of communications, from social media to phone calls.

A friendship requires a commitment to the other person. That means you keep showing up, even online, says Jeffrey Hall, a communications professor at the University of Kansas. It's much easier to keep friendships going if you already have strong real-world relationships.

Doing Fun Things Together Is Essential For Friendship

Playing games is important, and doing fun things together is an essential part of a friendship. Taking part in those activities can help friends talk about and process more important issues, from politics to their mental health.

Many people have mental health concerns at some point. What distinguishes a mental illness, such as depression, from normal feelings, such as sadness, is that mental illnesses cause ongoing stress. They can severely interfere with a person's ability to function. Most mental illnesses can be treated with medication and therapy.

Mental health issues have been an especially big problem during the COVID-19 pandemic for teens and children. They are less used to being isolated socially than adults. For teens, this age is a critical time for developing friendships. According to a Common Sense Media survey, 38 percent of people between ages 14 and 22 report moderate or severe symptoms of depression. That represents an increase from 25 percent two years before. Half of teens and young adults report that they have become depressed when a family member comes down with COVID.

The year has felt especially long for children, and many have struggled to stay engaged with friends they can't see.

When schools first closed down, Elissa Katz installed a chat app for kids on her children's iPads. The app was a hit for a while, but as the months have worn on, the kids have stopped using it as much.

In some places, vaccines have become more widely available. People are letting themselves imagine and even plan their post-pandemic social lives.

Making New Friends Online

Moshe Isaacian had just moved to Portland, Oregon, when the pandemic started. He's managed to make new friends online from around the world.

"It's a community of people that I can count on to be there, to just destress with and have a good day," said Isaac. "It's kind of like a live therapy session."

He's already talked to a few people he plans to hang out with this year in real life. Maybe they'll have an old-fashioned gaming party night in person, he said.

Not everyone prefers real-world interactions over online socializing. Kathryn Morris misses seeing her best friend in person, but she realizes that she's more comfortable online than she was in real life.

"Being able to communicate from behind a screen allows me to use my online persona — Alexis — as a mask. It makes me feel safer, or even a bit stronger than if it was just me in front of someone I didn't know," said Morris. "Being online allows me to be anonymous, whereas being physically present, doesn't."