How I maintain long distance friendships while staying off of social media

I've been cutting down on my social media usage for a few months now, and the biggest problem I've run into is the reason I justified using it for so long in the first place: I live about 3 hours away from my best friends and it's really difficult to find time to visit them. This makes staying in touch and maintaining our almost 20 year friendship difficult. We have an Instagram group chat which is 5 years old this year and still going strong, but with my goal of staying off social media and the fact that I've started leaving my phone at home most of the day, I've had to take a few extra steps to stay in touch.

1) Turning Instagram into a messaging app. I downloaded Distraction Free Instagram, which is free, and turns off your ability to use reels, your explore page, your home page and basically everything except dms (you can choose what to turn off or keep on, I kept stories and notes because I personally don't find them addicting like I did with all of the scrolling). I can now just check in on our group chat without being tempted to doomscroll on reels for hours. Pros: My friends didn't need to do anything for this change, it was 100% on my end and super easy to do. I can still check in on what they're up to with stories, but no ads and no addictive feeds. Cons: A big part of the group chat is sending memes to each other and I can no longer participate in that. I'm able to see posts they send but I can't send anything myself since I don't have any posts on my feed.

2) Phone calls. I am such a typical gen z, I really hate phone calls. To anyone. Hate it. Only people I will pick up the phone for are my parents, my very best friends, and my dentist. Anyone else can just text me. But I couldn't say no when my best friend asked to do weekly phone calls. It was scary at first (what a silly fear, calling your best friend), but I realised pretty quickly that it's easier than I thought it would be to talk on the phone for an hour or so. Pros: I like the scheduled, alloted socialising time. It really works for my brain and I can look forward to it every week. I am such a yapper so it's great to have someone to talk about my week with all in one go, rather than as its happening (my boyfriend is so sick of me telling him every detail of my life in real time). Cons: It is time where I can't really do much else, but that's not a huge issue. I do struggle not being able to read body language in a conversation, which is mildly annoying, but I've known this friend long enough that's not really a problem.

3) Writing letters. Me and one of my best friends decided to become pen pals to help with our long distance issue. It is SO fun!!! This is 100% my favourite method of communication now. It's so cool getting to write down all my thoughts and then decorate the letter with stickers! I always wax seal the letters which is very fun. I can also send her little things like stickers for her to use, or cross stitches that I've made. Pros: It's an amazing creative outlet. You can add pretty much any flairs you want. I like to handwrite my letters and put stickers on them, my friend likes to type her letters and makes gorgeous backgrounds for them digitally. We print out photos to send each other. It's just so fun!! Cons: This is the most expensive communication option I've listed. Not crazy, but takes some investment. I buy paper and stickers for the letters, which costs a little bit. Stamps are I think $23 for 10 which is a little steep, but we send letters infrequently enough that it isn't breaking the bank. It is also a longgg process. We send letters replying to each other, and letters take about a week to get from one place to the other, plus time spent writing the letters, so that can mean about 2-3 weeks between when I get one letter from her until I get the next letter. But I think slow communication can have it's benefits too.

100% would recommend trying these out with your friends, especially if you want to spend less time on your phone. They're fun ways to talk to people you care about!