Discord: A New Way to Connect with Friends During Social Distancing

With the coronavirus pandemic forcing us to social distance from others and stay home for many weeks, many of us are trying to keep in touch with our friends. I have been pondering a way that I could connect with my friends in a fun new way. Zoom meetings and GroupMe are both wonderful online applications to connect with people face to face, but Discord is a new application that I have discovered to supplement the other apps. Discord is a groupchat application which was originally created for online gamers, but it has now become inclusive to everyone. It combines the video chat of Skype and the chat capabilities of GroupMe with other great functionalities like screensharing. From my experience, it is a great way to meet up with friends or make new ones as there are subcommunities (like a subreddit) that people can join and talk about their common interest.

For all my gamers out there, if you have not checked out Discord, I would highly recommend it for you also. There are robust communities of livestream events you can join and watch, or you can form party members and use discord as your communication platform as you hop into online matchmaking for games such as Call of Duty, League of Legends, or Fortnite where communication is imperative.

- Jared F., RA