As you are confined to your home during the COVID-19 pandemic, you’ll spend a lot of time thinking up ways to keep busy and pass the day. Many students are stuck at home bored out of their minds and sulking over the fact that they are not able to see friends. Thankfully, there are several apps that can be used to help keep in touch with everyone. Here are the top three apps students have been using to maintain communication with friends.

Airtime
Airtime lets you video chat with your friends while enjoying movies, videos, TV shows, and listening to music. With Airtime, you create rooms where you select what you want to watch in that room, and you are able to invite up to 10 people to video chat. Secret rooms can be created where you get to select which friends join your room or you can make a party room where anyone can join. “Airtime is a great app to use to watch content with my favorite people. Not only do I get to watch my favorite videos but I get to watch my friends’ reactions to them,” junior Holly Tran said.

Bunch
Bunch is an app that lets you play multiplayer games while having a group video chat. You are able to see when your friends are playing and can jump into the same game anytime. The app has many amusing and iconic games. You can challenge your friends in a game of pool or race around in Mario Kart. “Especially with this whole lockdown situation happening, it’s a nice way for me to get my mind off the coronavirus and relax a little bit,” junior Melanie Reyes said.

Marco Polo
With Marco Polo, you can send video messages to friends and family, which they can watch and reply to. This app saves all of your video messages automatically so you can go back to conversations and look back on the fun videos. It doesn’t limit your video time either. You can also add crazy voice effects and filters if you want to mix up your conversations. “My friends have been feeling really down about staying at home and not getting to see each other, so I really like to use this app to send my friends fun videos to help cheer them up,” senior Idil Ahmed said.