Feeling like you’re all alone can be absolutely crippling. It’s not just about feeling a bit sad; prolonged feelings of loneliness can actually lead to depression and other health problems, like troubles with sleeping. To combat feelings of loneliness, one of the best solutions comes in the form of a collaborative video message. Think of it like sending a group virtual hug to a loved one so they know that they’re not alone.
Can a group video gift really help, though? Here’s what you need to know.
What is a Virtual Hug?
A hug is the most common gesture a human being shows towards another fellow being – bringing him or her close to their body and heart and expressing love, support, affection, empathy, or just warmth. But in today's times, when individuals are separated by distances but connected via technology at the same time, you can send hugs virtually and recreate the same emotions. There are numerous ways of doing so.
You can either send a ‘hug’ emoji through your smartphone or just a text conveying your hugs. You could also use slightly more elaborate methods like a card conveying your hugs or memes or GIFs. The latter are usually videos or animations of famous characters hugging and conveying the message beautifully, sometimes humorously even.
It’s a Fun Activity for All Ages
While loneliness can strike people of all ages, seniors are especially vulnerable. Older people who report feeling lonely may develop diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia. While there are many activities that can be done together with seniors, some may suffer from physical limitations as they age. This prevents seniors from enjoying many types of activities with friends and family.
A video gift message is an easy, fun way for seniors to collaborate with friends and family, even for seniors who rarely use technology. It’s just one small way to let grandparents and senior friends know that they’re loved.
You Can Create a Group Video at Any Time
It’s always fun to celebrate special events, but you don’t need an excuse to give someone a virtual hug. Group videos can be created and sent at any time — not just during birthdays and holidays. For many, holidays and birthdays are the only time when someone will remember to check in on them, but loneliness doesn’t just occur during special occasions. If you know someone who’s been in a funk for a long time and needs a pick-me-up, get a couple of friends together and create a quick group video! It’s a fast and easy way to remind someone you care about them.
You Can Remind Someone That They’re Awesome
If you’re not sure what to talk about in your video, you can just talk about how great the person receiving the video is. Talk about what you admire the most about them, share some happy memories, or just remind them to keep their chin up. A virtual hug can be about anything, but the point is to help uplift whoever receives the video. Drag and drop videos into your video editor to create a dynamic message of love.
When is a Virtua hug Appropriate
The reason behind sending the virtual hug should be a genuine one, making your gesture sincere. Additionally, your relationship with the receiver of the virtual hug should be one appropriate for such a gesture.
Virtual hug for Birthdays
Sending a virtual hug is perfect for happy occasions like birthdays to make the receiver feel really special and cared about. A birthday is all about celebrating an additional year – a milestone – and when you send a virtual hug to that person, you celebrate them too.
You can think of how you can send or give virtual hugs to the one that matters to you. But technology today has brought everybody closer. These individuals could be anyone, right from your spouse, partner, girlfriend to a sibling, close friend, or even a colleague who is good friends with you. Certainly, you can add a pinch of laughter by using the virtual hug memes nowadays that convey the message well.
Sending a virtual hug message on someone's birthday shows them that you are thinking of them and that you wish to express your deep feelings and affection. A great way of showing you care!
Virtual hug for Retirements
A congratulatory message for someone's retirement, along with the wish that they enjoy these new innings in their life, is great, but when you send them a virtual hug too, it really drives home the point. Give a retiring friend a virtual hug and see it light up their face.
But how do you hug someone through the internet? Nowadays, the world of communication channels conveys the best of your virtual hugs. You have the hug emoji as the simplest of these methods. You could also email or send GIFs about important characters hugging. Lastly, you have the option of sending memes conveying your hugs to the desired person.
What a virtual hug means is that it is an expression of affection, warmth, and a congratulatory tone that sometimes also expresses empathy or support. In this case, a hug video or message regarding someone's retirement conveys your greetings and wishes for the individual to enjoy their extraordinary new phase in life.
Virtual hug for Anniversary
An anniversary is more of an intimate occasion – one that is extremely special for the two people who are being celebrated as part of it. Hence, giving a virtual hug to your near and dear ones on their anniversary is a great way of expressing your emotions. Virtual hugs and kisses convey beautifully all that you feel for the ones whom they are intended for.
Do not think of how to give a virtual hug. All you have to do is plan and make it happen with a video. Gone are the days when you had only telephonic conversations to send a hug. Welcome to the era where you can hug the person through the video as you are with them.
Virtual hug for Graduation
Graduation is a very important event and a milestone in the life of any individual. So, when someone really close to you, like your child, friend/girlfriend/boyfriend, or sibling, is graduating, you would like to go the extra mile to make this event truly memorable for them. What better way to do this than sending a virtual hug?
Virtual hugs and kisses are stronger and more effective channels of communication that better express your love and admiration than other popular gestures like cards, emails, messages, etc. They make the recipient feel wanted, happy, and cared for by the sender. It is no wonder that these are gaining in popularity nowadays.
But what does a virtual hug mean or signify? When you offer a friend a virtual hug, it expresses the same admiration, love, and support as giving a hug in person. Hence, for those of you physically away from your loved one who is graduating, offering them a hug is a great way of making their day.
Virtual hug for Appreciation
You have some people in your life for who you are grateful for one thing or the other. Or you have recently come across someone who saved the day for you or had your back. Either way, you really need to express gratitude or at least appreciation for their deeds and gestures. Sending a virtual hug message is a great way of doing this.
We hug people in real life when we wish to convey our love, support, empathy, and admiration principally. But when you can't do so in real life, why not use the internet to send a virtual hug?
There is nothing like a hug (virtually) that will express your appreciation of some act or deed committed by a fellow human. Surely, the internet and technology can teach you how to hug someone through it.
So, the next time you wish to express admiration or appreciation, do it in the form of a virtual hug. Works better!
How to send a virtual hug
You can basically send a virtual hug in many forms. There is the classical hug symbol (two curly brackets) as the oldest method used to send someone a hug. Then, you also have hug emojis on all smartphones today. Lastly, there are GIFs (animated versions of popular hugs) and memes (a humorous video conveying hugs).
Send Virtual hug using Emoji
Wish to let someone know you are thinking about them? Send them a virtual hug emoji. These can also be used to communicate your empathy, support, and love for someone going through a tough time.
A simple text saying, 'Hug you or hugging you' basically conveys the same thing, but when you do it in the form of a colorful emoji, it conveys your feelings much more effectively. This emoji is great to use, particularly when you are geographically separated from your loved one and they need you around that much more. The recipient of the virtual hug emoji gets a feeling of being comforted and cherished when they see it.
Lastly, this is an extremely simple, inexpensive method of conveying your feelings that literally takes seconds to send.
Send Virtual Hug with a Text message
Your phone comes with a keyboard with characters other than the alphabets, which are used to convey emotions and feelings by individuals. For example, two curly brackets ({}) convey that you are sending someone a virtual hug. Though kind of outdated now, it was a popular and powerful tool to convey what you felt towards a person back in the time when there were no smartphones.
Though simple, a virtual hug in the form of a text message is nevertheless enough to light up someone’s day. Particularly, when you have a loved one in a different city or county to that in which you are residing and also when you are pressed for time but still wish to communicate on a deeper level, this text message of a virtual hug comes in handy.
Send Virtual Hug with GIFs
A GIF is an animation that lasts for a fairly short period of time – less than 30 seconds – and yet, it is more effective and powerful in conveying how you feel towards the recipient.
The GIF animations are relatively a recent addition to the various modes of sending virtual hugs and kisses. They are found in all modern smartphones and basically contain important events and happenings from episodes of popular TV programs, soaps, etc. They can be profound, lighthearted, amusing, or sometimes intimate and naughty too.
These virtual hugs in the form of GIFs are great to send to a boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse who is living away from you. Yet, you could also totally send them to a friend, a close colleague, or a sibling without feeling awkward about it.
As a gesture, these are slightly more elaborate, so send them to the one you truly care about deeply.
Send a Virtual Hug with special video messages
Lastly, we have the idea of especially making video messages in which numerous people relevant to the recipient send online hugs, kisses, and cuddles.
This is a long-lasting, more elaborate, and thoughtful way of making someone close to you feel truly special and feel wanted and cherished by a group of people. Hence, sending virtual hugs with special video messages for birthdays, anniversaries, and important milestones like the first promotion is always a great idea.
Websites like Celebrate instruct you on how to send virtual hugs in special video messages. They help to create wonderful, everlasting memories.
These special video messages usually consist of messages from a group of people that collectively send virtual hugs, kisses, and cuddles to the one they love.
Steps to create a virtual hug video using Celebrate
This website enlists a step-by-step approach to creating that special group video in which people collectively send virtual hugs and kisses to that one cherished individual. Let’s discuss these steps in further detail:
1. Initially, to be able to virtually send a hug or a kiss, you need to set up your own account. This is where the special page containing the ‘virtual hugs and kisses’ message will exist. At this point, you enter the name of the individual who is going to be gifted these group virtual hugs as well as the occasion these are being sent for. You need to select one occasion from a drop-down list which mentions different important events like birthday, anniversary, etc. Your personal account is from where the invitation for sending hugs and kisses will go to other individuals. You also need to enter a date by which you expect the virtual hugs to all arrive in order to be gifted.
2. It is now time to send the invites. You just enter the names and email IDs of the people who will be sending the virtual hug, and they will be intimated of the same. There is no limit on the number of invites you can send. The more they are, the more impactful your video will be! Also, invitees need not have an account on Celebrate too; they can simply record their videos with the virtual hugs on their smartphones or computers/laptops and upload the video link on Celebrate. The invitation to send a virtual hug comes with the arrangement to upload the video too. It's that simple, really!
As soon as anyone responds and creates a video, Celebrate will notify you via email.
3. One by one, your virtual hug videos will start arriving. After you believe everyone’s video is present in your account, you would start organizing the videos. It is usual to put the people closest to the receiver of the virtual hug at the very beginning of this video montage. All these video messages will be collected on your clipboard page. You have to drag and drop them to your timeline in order to create a sequential video with hugs from close ones of the receiver. Finally, only those messages will appear in your gift video which you have added to your timeline
4. Once your timeline is ready, the video message is also complete and available on your Celebrate page.
At this point, you can creatively edit the entire video message by deciding the chronological sequence of the individual virtual hug messages. The Celebrate app also allows you the options of adding memorable photos, great background music and text cards that convey the message further beautifully. All these options are quite easy to follow and execute; and you can add or omit out these options as per your will.
5. You would also need to undertake a little processing of this video – you would wish to add video titles like ‘Aunt Rosa’s Warm Hug’ or “Love from Braxton,” etc. The Celebrate app also has some design elements that make you video more fun, heartwarming and interesting.
6. At this point, you are done with adding everyone’s video, organizing them and applying all special effects that you wish. Now, you click on “Process” at the bottom of your screen. This will generate a video slideshow. This is playable on all devices. You can also post it to social media like Facebook or Instagram.
Lastly, you can also email contributors a link to this video.
Finally, the person to whom the virtual hug is intended for will receive a surprise ‘virtual hug’ video gift on their special occasion. Join them in enjoying this special day!
Let a Loved One Know That You’re There for Them
Everyone leads hectic lives, and it’s easy to overlook the people that are being left behind. Sometimes, making them feel less lonely is as easy as sending them a virtual hug. Putting together a group video is one way to do this. It’s an activity that people of all ages can participate in, and videos can be made even if there isn’t a special occasion to celebrate. Talk about what you admire the most about the person who’s receiving the video, and make sure that they know that they’re important to the people around them.
Sending a video through the Celebrate app can make someone’s entire day. There’s no technical skill required, and it makes a huge impact. Try it out today!
