5 Interactive Ways To Spend Time With Your Friends

You might have noticed how everyone is engrossed in their gadgets during family gatherings or bonding with friends. While your loved ones are constantly clicking their phones, iPad, and other portable devices, real conversations are becoming rare. Thus, the opportunity to strengthen your connection might be lost.

Disconnecting from gadgets might be challenging, but there are ways to spend time with your friends without using these gadgets. With the right activities, you can connect more with them and have fun. Here are some things you and your friends can do and enjoy while taking a break from your gadgets.

Turn Off Gadgets

If you want to spend quality time with each other, you and your friends need to sacrifice your screen time. Turning off your gadgets could be the first step you can do. It could also be one of the house rules when you are together. However, everyone in the group must be willing to cooperate or else; the purpose might be defeated.

You and your friends should agree on this matter before implementing it in your get-together to avoid any misunderstanding. In case one of you needs to take an urgent call, your friend could turn it into silent mode instead.

By turning off your gadgets, it would focus the atmosphere to your bonding. Everyone could feel more welcomed and invited. You and your friends could attend more to each other without interference from the gadgets.

Start Playing With Classic Board Games

Before the trend of high-tech gadgets, a board game had always been the source of entertainment when a group of friends wanted to have some fun. Meeting with your friends could be the best time to bring these classic board games back. Though they have digital equivalents, you might not want to miss a lot of benefits when you're playing it the traditional way.

At times when you meet with your friends after a long day at school or work, playing board games is an excellent starter to settle your thoughts and feelings. Since one of its side effects is laughter, you and your friends could release the stress away and start having a good time.

The foundation of playing board games is cooperation. They are designed for social interaction, and players would be required to engage and communicate. Therefore, it could be the perfect way to build a rapport with your friends.

Bonding Over Food

Eating together is a chance to bond, de-stress, and relax. Since there isn't much to occupy you while eating, you can catch up more with your friends. One study suggested that social eating has evolved as a mechanism for facilitating social bonding.

The same study also found out that eating together involves laughter and reminiscing. Laughter is known to trigger the endorphin system, which, in return, promotes primate and human social bonding. Thus, bonding with your friends over food is an excellent avenue to make conversations, especially during dinner.

Evening meals are considered significantly more valuable for building friendships than eating during the daytime. Perhaps, it is because social topics predominate in evening conversation. If you want your get-together to be more interactive, setting it in the evening might be the best time.

Play Question Games

Another helpful way to initiate a conversation with your friends is through playing question games. The rules depend on the players, but the main idea is to take turns in asking questions. However, there are many different versions of question games you can search online, such as Never Have I Ever questions.

You can tweak the mechanics of the games a bit, depending on your preference. Make sure to prepare many question games ahead of time. Aside from these games being easy to play, they would also help you to know and learn more about each other.

Have A Heart-To-Heart Talk

Entertainment isn't the only way to interact with your friends. While it is essential to enjoy your get-together, going into a purposeful conversation is also important. You don't know what your friends are going through, and making room for a heart-to-heart talk might be what they need.

Some people want to spend time with their friends because they want to forget their problems for a while. But some might need some company. Aside from amusing games and pleasant talks, you can also encourage intimate conversations with your friends.

Takeaway

While gadgets can bring a lot of benefits in your life, it is vital to assure that it won't impede your relationships. Limiting your gadget use is essential if you want to spend quality time with your family and friends. If you don't want to compromise your relationship with them, you need to give up some of your screen time. Keep in mind that nothing beats real conversations with your loved ones.