You have guided your children through their younger years, raising them in a home filled with love and laughter. But there comes a time when your children leave home and start having children of their own.
How can you stay in touch with your grown children – and their children – when everyone’s lives are busy and active? Sometimes the best way to maintain communication is through technology. Here are four ways for anyone – at any age – to instantly and frequently keep in touch with friends and family.
- Connect instantly through a text or an email. According to MSNBC.com, young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 send an impressive 2,000 texts a month, while people in their early 30s may send as many as 1,000 texts each month. Texting and emailing is a popular means of communication, especially for people who have mismatched schedules and are not always able to connect on the phone.
- Talk face-to-face from anywhere. Modern technology has done wonders for how we make “phone calls” to one another. Thanks to applications like FaceTime, Zoom, and Skype, video chatting is no longer a dream of the future. These applications, which are free to download, allow you to talk face-to-face with your kids and other family members across the country—even across the globe. Thanks to today’s smartphones, video chatting does not stop at the computer; you can take Skype to your phone when you download an app or use FaceTime with your iPhone.
- Send a friend request. With social media platforms like Facebook, it is easy to keep up with your children and grandchildren no matter where they are. Setting up a free profile on this social media platform gives you access to your child and his or her family and lets you see videos, photos, and personal updates. It may be slightly overwhelming when first setting up a Facebook profile, but your children or grandchildren can certainly show you the ropes of social media.
- Download an app. In today’s world of smartphones, there are a variety of apps that help friends and family keep up on the latest family news. WhatsApp is a texting option that allows users to exchange messages for free, even if they are in different countries. This app has group chat functions so you can chat with all the grandchildren at once. Do you prefer sharing voice messages? HeyTell lets you send and receive voice messages anytime and anywhere to other family members who have the app.
At Holiday Retirement, we believe that being social is one of the seven key aspects to helping our independent senior living residents lead enriched lives. Finding new technology-based ways to be social, such as texting, joining Facebook, and video chatting on Skype, can help you maintain relationships with friends and family both near and far. At Holiday Retirement, we also host a variety of in-person social events so our seniors can connect with other residents and foster new relationships and friendships.
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