Keeping Faraway Family Close Takes One App and a Standing Time

Quick answer: Ask your family which app they already use, and use only that one. Then set a short call at the same time every week, and start one shared photo album everybody adds to.

Every Tuesday at 6:45 p.m. Central, a retired mail carrier in Omaha opens her iPad, and her granddaughter in Charlotte holds up whatever she made that week. A Lego tower. A science-fair volcano. Once, a very flat pancake. The call runs about twelve minutes. Nobody schedules it anymore. It just happens, the way Sunday dinner used to.

That's most of the secret, and it has very little to do with technology. Families spread across four states rarely lack the tools. They've usually got too many, used at random, with long silences broken by one big awkward call on a birthday.

Use the app your family already uses

You'll hear strong opinions about which video app is best. Ignore them. The best app is the one your son, your daughter-in-law and the grandkids already have open. Send one text: "What do you all use for video calls?"

• All iPhones and iPads? It's almost always FaceTime. It's built in and free, and there's nothing to install.
• A mix of iPhones and Android phones? WhatsApp is the usual answer. It's free, works on both, and handles video calls, group chats and photos in one place.
• One Android holdout in an Apple family? FaceTime can still work. The iPhone user creates a FaceTime link and sends it, and it opens in the Android phone's web browser.
• Zoom or Google Meet? Fine if your family already uses them. No reason to add them otherwise.

Learn one app well rather than three halfway. When a grandchild offers to set it up, sit together and keep the device in your own hands. Young people tend to grab the phone and fly through it. You'll remember the steps you tapped yourself, not the ones you watched go by.

While you've got a patient helper at the table, it's a good moment to knock out one more setup job, like logging into your my Social Security account. Read Your Social Security Statement Backward explains what to do once you're in.

A standing time beats a long call

The hour-long holiday call is the hardest kind there is. Everyone's performing. The baby's crying. The teenager appears only as a forehead.

Short and regular works far better. Ten or fifteen minutes, same day, same time, every week. Put it on both calendars as a repeating event. A standing time does two jobs at once. Nobody has to work up the energy to arrange it, and a missed week gets noticed, which is its own kind of care.

Fit it to their life, not only yours. Dinner and bedtime are chaos in a house with small children. Right after school or Saturday morning tends to be calmer. Write both time zones into the calendar note so nobody rings Portland at 6 a.m.

Some families won't commit to a schedule. Busy jobs, shift work, travel sports. Don't turn that into a test of love. Just be the one who reliably calls. Every family needs a fixed point, and it might as well be you.

Screens are a supplement, though, not a replacement for faces in the same room. If the rest of your week feels thin, Become a Regular Somewhere is worth your time.

Give small children something to do

Little kids don't make conversation on video. They do things. So give the call a job.

• Read a chapter book together. Buy two copies, one for your house and one for theirs, and read a chapter each week. A grandfather reading one chapter of a mystery every Thursday has a date that'll last all winter.
• Show and tell, both ways. You show the tomato plants or the birdhouse you're building. They show the loose tooth.
• Cook the same simple thing at the same time. Same pancake recipe, two kitchens, one mess each.
• Let them give you a tour. Children love carrying a tablet around the house. Fair warning: you may get seasick.

Teenagers are another matter. Most will text long before they'll call. Meet them there. A photo of your dog in a ridiculous sweater with a one-line caption gets more back than "Call me sometime."

One shared album, not forty texts

Photos sent by text sink into a long thread and disappear. A shared album keeps them in one place and lets everybody add their own.

• On Apple devices, open the Photos app and create a Shared Album, then invite the family. Photos in a shared album don't count against your iCloud storage.
• On Android or in a mixed family, Google Photos lets you create a shared album and send the link to anyone.

Give it an obvious name, like "Miller Family 2027." Turn on notifications so you get a small ping when your grandson's soccer photos land. Then comment. "Look at that swing!" under a picture is a two-second phone call.

The annoying part nobody mentions: Apple's shared albums store a smaller version of each photo. That's plenty for looking, but not for printing a big framed enlargement. For that, ask whoever took it to send you the original.

The group text needs a few house rules

Family group chats are wonderful until one has two hundred unread messages about who's bringing the potato salad.

• Mute when you need to. On iPhone and in WhatsApp, you can silence a chat's alerts without leaving it. Nobody's notified. You'll still see everything when you open it.
• Start a second, smaller chat for the two or three people actually planning a visit, so twenty relatives aren't getting flight numbers.
• A heart or a thumbs-up counts as a reply. Use them freely. It tells your daughter you saw the photo without making her read a paragraph.

For the one who doesn't want a phone

Some people won't use a tablet and shouldn't have to. A husband or wife whose memory is slipping. A 94-year-old aunt. Someone who simply doesn't care to learn.

A Wi-Fi photo frame is the gentlest answer. Family members send pictures from their own phones, and the pictures show up on the frame on the dresser. The person enjoying it never touches a thing.

Before you buy one, check two things. Does it need a monthly subscription to keep working? And can the family add photos from the phones and apps they already use? Some smart displays, like Amazon's Echo Show, can also take video calls started by approved family members. That helps someone who struggles to answer a phone, but set it up with that person's knowledge and agreement. Being seen should never come as a surprise.

The text that always gets a phone call back

Scammers love a family that's spread out. The common one: a text from an unknown number saying "Hi Mom, I dropped my phone, this is my new number," followed a day later by an urgent bill that needs paying. A newer version is a phone call in a voice that sounds just like your grandson, saying he's in jail or in the hospital and needs money now.

The fix costs nothing. Before you send a dollar, call the person back on the number you already have saved. And at your next standing call, agree on a family code word that anyone in real trouble would use.

If a scammer has reached you, report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov or 1-877-382-4357. The AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline, 877-908-3360, will talk it through with you, member or not.

Then get back to the good part. Next Tuesday, at a quarter to seven, somebody will be waiting to show you a pancake.