Zoe Sutka, 7, hasn’t seen her friends face-to-face in more than a week due to the coronavirus crisis, but she said she talks to them almost 24/7.
“I like video chatting with them best,” said Zoe, who goes to Pollard School in Plaistow. She said she also uses the Facebook Kids Messenger app to talk to her friends while her family is social distancing in their Plaistow home.
Schools in the region are shuttered through May 4, so people can practice social distancing to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, commonly called COVID-19.
This left multiple kids, like Zoe, without any way to see their friends. However, video chatting, email and messaging applications allow local kids to maintain a social life despite the distance.
“I’m so used to going out to lunch and recess and sitting at a table with my friends,” said 10-year-old Valentina Ciccone, a student at Hampstead Central School. “I like to email my friends during the day, because you can send a long message and it goes back and forth, and you can share pictures and show things to do at the house.”
Valentina said she and her friends will share photos of the crafts that they work on throughout the day, help each other with homework and give each other ideas about how to spend their time while stuck at home for the next few weeks.
In Plaistow, Katie Phan said her two children video chat with their friends every day using the Zoom app.
“Seeing their friends is 100% essential,” said Phan. “They are so social. To me, this is a huge drastic change for them. We're big fans of sleepovers. There are always kids in our house. It is crucial for them.”
According to Phan, her daughters Leila Phan, 6, and Lily Swanson, 11, video chat with their friends almost every day at noon for lunch. Leila and her friends even came up with the idea to have a virtual sleepover.
“They ended up building tents in their rooms, and we set them up with pillows and blankets and lights,” Phan said. “They were coloring and drawing together, and showing each other their pictures. It was so cute and it just warms my heart.”
She added, “It was all the girls’ (idea).”
Video chatting gives her kids a chance to be creative, Phan said, and to find new ways to spend time at home.
“I think its amazing for them. It's allowing them to be kids. It’s allowing them to be creative on a different level. I would never be like, ‘Leila, do you want to do a three-marker challenge?’” Phan said, referencing a game her daughter plays with her friends over video chat. Leila and her friends close their eyes and pick three different markers, she said, and they have to draw a picture using only those three colors.
Jen Sutka, who lives in Plaistow and has four children, said her two youngest children, including Zoe, are FaceTiming with their friends all day long. Her older children, who are 12 and 13, mostly text their friends, she said.
“I just want them to stay in touch with friends and talk about what is going on in the world with kids in their own age,” Sutka said. “I think it's very important. I want them to talk to at least one person outside the house a day. I haven't had to try hard to enforce that one.”
Five-year-old Lila Sutka, Zoe’s younger sister, said that if she didn’t get to talk to her friends while she was social distancing, she would be “not happy,” and Zoe agreed.
“I would get bored,” Zoe said. “I miss all my friends and teachers.”
Despite the fact that Zoe said she talks to her friends every day over video chat, she said she can’t wait to go back to school and see everyone in person.
“At school you can actually talk to each other face to face,” Zoe said. “And now we have to talk through a phone or iPad.”
Valentina said that she thinks not being in school will make her more appreciative of the time she spends with her friends.
She said, “the thing I miss most is being able to look at my friends and talk to them without having to press send.”
These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.