How to Meet New People During COVID and Build Real Connections

Learn practical, specific ways to meet new people during COVID through virtual events, outdoor activities, and community spaces while staying safe and genuine.

Meeting new people during COVID means shifting where and how you show up socially. The most effective approaches combine low-risk in-person settings like outdoor activities and small gatherings with intentional online communities built around shared interests. The key is consistency and follow-through: showing up repeatedly in the same spaces, whether virtual or physical, is what turns acquaintances into actual friends.

Before COVID, meeting people often happened by accident: at a bar, through a coworker, at a gym class you stumbled into. The pandemic disrupted those casual collision points. Offices went remote, gyms closed, and the spontaneous social infrastructure that most people relied on without realizing it simply disappeared. What replaced it was not nothing, but it required more intention. You had to decide to meet people rather than just fall into it.

That shift is actually useful to understand because it changes what you should do. If the old model was passive, the new model is active. You have to choose a context, show up consistently, and be willing to introduce yourself in spaces that might feel a little more deliberate than a chance encounter used to. That can feel awkward at first, but it also means the connections you make tend to be with people who are equally motivated to build something, which is not a bad starting point.

Outdoor settings remain one of the more practical ways to meet people in person during periods of COVID concern because ventilation is not an issue and you can naturally maintain distance without it feeling rude. Running clubs, hiking groups, outdoor yoga classes, community gardens, and farmers markets all create repeated contact with the same people over time, which is exactly the condition under which friendships tend to form. You are not trying to make a friend in one conversation; you are trying to see the same person enough times that a conversation becomes easy.

The practical move is to pick one or two recurring outdoor activities rather than sampling a dozen things once. If you join a Saturday morning trail running group and show up three weeks in a row, you will start to recognize faces, learn names, and have something to talk about beyond small talk. The shared physical experience also gives you a natural topic. Complaining about a steep hill together is a surprisingly effective social lubricant. Look for groups through local running stores, community boards, Meetup, or neighborhood Facebook groups, which often list free or low-cost outdoor events.

Online Communities That Actually Lead to Real Friendships

Not all online communities are equal when it comes to building friendships. Passive scrolling through a subreddit or liking posts on Instagram does not create connection. What works is active participation in smaller, interest-specific spaces where the same people show up regularly. Discord servers built around hobbies like tabletop gaming, book clubs, language learning, or creative writing tend to have this quality. So do Slack communities for professional interests, or even well-moderated Facebook groups focused on a specific local area or activity.

The transition from online acquaintance to actual friend usually requires a step up in intimacy, which sounds more complicated than it is. It might mean moving from group chat to a direct message, from text to a video call, or from a virtual event to meeting in person for a walk. Suggesting that step is often the bottleneck because it feels presumptuous. A simple, low-stakes invitation works well: something like asking if someone wants to jump on a call to keep talking about a topic you were both discussing in the group. Most people who are also trying to make friends will say yes.

Virtual Events and Classes as a Starting Point

Virtual events expanded enormously during COVID and many of them stuck around because they genuinely work for certain purposes. Online cooking classes, virtual trivia nights, remote book clubs, and live-streamed craft workshops all create a shared experience that gives people something to react to together. Platforms like Eventbrite, Meetup, and Bumble BFF list virtual events specifically designed for people who want to meet others, not just learn a skill.

The limitation of virtual events is that they can feel transactional if there is no structure for follow-up. A one-time Zoom cooking class where everyone cooks and then logs off is fun but unlikely to produce lasting friendships on its own. Look for events that have a recurring format or a community attached to them, like a monthly virtual book club or a weekly online game night. When you find one that fits, commit to it for at least a month before deciding whether it is working. Relationships need repetition, and that is just as true online as it is in person.

Volunteering as a Way to Meet People With Shared Values

Volunteering is one of the most underrated ways to meet people because it solves several problems at once. It gives you a shared purpose, which immediately creates something to talk about beyond yourself. It puts you in contact with people across different age groups and backgrounds than you might encounter in a professional or social context. And it gives you a reason to show up regularly, which is the ingredient most casual social encounters lack.

During COVID, many volunteer organizations adapted to allow smaller groups, outdoor work, or hybrid models. Food banks, habitat restoration projects, animal shelters, and community cleanup efforts often have ongoing volunteer slots that bring back the same people week after week. If you are someone who finds small talk difficult, volunteering is particularly useful because the work itself fills the silence and gives you something concrete to focus on while still being around people. VolunteerMatch and Idealist are good starting points for finding local opportunities aligned with causes you actually care about.

Rekindling Dormant Connections Before Seeking New Ones

It is worth noting that meeting new people is not always the most efficient path to a richer social life. COVID created a lot of dormant connections, people you used to see regularly who simply drifted away when routines changed. Reaching back out to those people is often easier and more rewarding than starting from scratch with strangers, because you already have a foundation of shared history.

A simple message works fine: something honest like saying you have been thinking about reconnecting and asking if they would want to grab coffee or catch up on a call. Most people respond warmly to that kind of outreach because they are often in the same position. You do not need a special occasion or a long explanation. The awkwardness you might feel about reaching out after a gap is usually much larger in your head than it is in reality. Rebuilding a few of those connections can also give you more social confidence before you start introducing yourself to strangers.

How to Make a Good First Impression in Low-Contact Settings

First impressions during COVID look a little different than they used to. Masks, distance, and reduced physical contact mean that warmth has to come through other channels: your tone of voice, eye contact, the questions you ask, and whether you actually listen to the answers. Being genuinely curious about someone is more effective than trying to be impressive, and it is also more comfortable for most people to sustain.

In practice, this means asking follow-up questions rather than pivoting back to yourself, remembering small details someone mentioned and bringing them up the next time you see them, and being willing to share something honest about yourself rather than defaulting to surface-level pleasantries. None of this requires you to be extroverted or especially charming. It just requires paying attention, which is something anyone can do. If you are meeting people in a context where masks are worn, speaking clearly and slightly more expressively than usual helps your warmth come through.

Extended periods of reduced social contact genuinely affect how comfortable people feel in social situations. If you find yourself more anxious around new people than you used to be, or if small talk feels harder than it once did, that is a common experience and not a sign that something is wrong with you. Social skills are partly habitual, and habits that go unpracticed for months or years take time to rebuild.

The most useful approach is gradual exposure rather than forcing yourself into overwhelming situations. Start with low-stakes interactions: chatting with a barista, saying hello to a neighbor, commenting in an online community. Build up from there. Setting a small, specific goal, like introducing yourself to one new person per week, is more sustainable than vague intentions to be more social. If anxiety around social situations is significantly affecting your daily life, speaking with a therapist is a reasonable step, not because something is broken but because having support while rebuilding social confidence can make the process faster and less discouraging.

Turning Acquaintances Into Actual Friends Takes Deliberate Steps

One of the most common frustrations people have is meeting people they like but never quite crossing the line from acquaintance to friend. That gap usually exists because neither person takes the initiative to suggest something more personal than the context they already share. You can fix this by being the one who suggests the next step: a coffee, a walk, a follow-up conversation about something you both mentioned.

Friendship also deepens through reciprocal vulnerability, which does not mean sharing your deepest fears on a first meeting. It means being willing to say something honest about your life, your interests, or your experience rather than keeping every conversation at the level of small talk. When you share something real and the other person responds in kind, that is the moment a connection starts to feel like a friendship. The COVID era, for all its difficulties, gave many people a clearer sense of what they actually want from their social lives. That clarity is worth using.

Frequently asked questions

Is it harder to make friends as an adult during COVID?

Making friends as an adult was already more effortful than in school or college, and COVID added another layer by removing many of the casual social settings people relied on. That said, the challenge is structural rather than personal. Joining recurring activities, being consistent, and taking initiative on follow-up conversations are the practical levers that make the biggest difference.

What if I am introverted and find meeting new people draining?

Introversion does not mean you cannot build meaningful friendships; it means you may need to be more selective about the settings you choose. Smaller groups, one-on-one conversations, and interest-based communities tend to work better for introverts than large social events. Giving yourself recovery time after social interactions is not avoidance; it is just knowing how you work.

How do I know if an online friendship can become a real one?

Online friendships can be genuinely real, but they tend to deepen when they move beyond the original platform and involve some form of real-time conversation, whether that is a video call, a voice chat, or eventually meeting in person. If you have been talking with someone online for a while and the connection feels meaningful, suggesting a video call is a reasonable next step.

Are apps like Bumble BFF actually useful for making friends?

Friendship apps can be a useful starting point, particularly for people who have recently moved or who do not have an obvious social context to plug into. They work best when you treat them as a way to find people to do specific activities with rather than expecting instant friendship. Suggesting a concrete plan, like a walk or a coffee, tends to produce better results than extended in-app chatting.

Your next step

This week, pick one recurring activity, whether a local outdoor group, a virtual community, or a volunteer slot, and commit to showing up at least three times before deciding if it is working. Consistency is what turns a new setting into a place where you actually know people.