When you study abroad, you’re going to want to make new friends as soon as you arrive. This shouldn’t be hard, but you can make it even easier with the help of technology.
You’ll almost certainly want to take your smartphone with you, and there are lots of useful apps that can make it easier to make friends and stay in contact with them. Here are some of the best.
WhatsApp is probably the most important app to have on your phone these days if you want to stay in touch with people.
The free messaging app is used all over the world, and you can instantly communicate with any of your contacts for free. You can use it to send voice messages, photo messages, and text messages, and even hold live video chats.
It’s also great for forming groups so you can hold group chats with your new friends and stay in the loop as soon as you arrive.
Skype
You will probably want to download Skype to your phone to keep in touch with your family back home. But when you return from your overseas study, perhaps for the vacation, you can use it to stay in touch with all the new friends you have made.
You can make free live video calls from Skype from anywhere in the world, making it an essential app for staying in touch.
Use a Call Recording App
When you first start making new friends upon arrival, you may receive lots of calls and discuss details for meeting up with your friends. However, sometimes you can miss an important detail, such as a name or an address, and this is where a call recording app can be useful.
Automatic Call Recorder for Me (from Apalon Apps for Android) allows you to record all of your calls with ease. So now you can talk to your new friends over the phone without having to remember all of the details because you can listen back to them later on.
Social Media
Social media apps are essential for keeping in touch with your new friends. You should certainly be using Facebook, but also find out about other networks your new friends are on, like SnapChat.
When you meet someone new, you can find them on your chosen social network and stay in touch with them this way directly from your phone. This can be a more casual way to stay in touch, and it may be more effective for keeping up to date with friends.
MeetUp.com
You might also want to visit the MeetUp website to find out what’s going on in your area. Using this website, you can find out about all the local groups nearby, and you can then join them and meet up with like-minded people. It’s a great way to make friends when you arrive somewhere new, so take a look and see what you can find.
Use Technology to Stay in Touch
These are some of the best websites and apps you can use to make friends and stay in touch with them when you study abroad. So try them for yourself and start growing your new circle of friends.
Poppy Woodward is an army wife and mom of 2 teenage daughters who are at boarding school. Being apart from her family can be difficult and she shares how tech can be used to stay in touch and keep the family connection close no matter how far the physical distance.
