How to make friends online during a pandemic

Depending on the level of connection you're looking for with people, there are going to be a number of different ways you can go about this. Personally I've found that speciality and niche communities around topics of interest have been where I've met many online friends.

You can find communities around some of your favourite topics where you can get some written communication going with other users. More and more of the larger YouTube channels are coming out with Discord communities that you can join and chat with other fans of the channel. These are great because they contain both written chat and voice chat -- so if you prefer talking verbally with people, it's often easy to jump into a chat and get talking.

If you play games, the voice channels within games can sometimes be a great place to meet and befriend new people. You can then continue to play games and chat with them to build up a friendship. Though this can be a bit hit and miss depending on the game as you can get some fairly abrasive and toxic people in the chats who just like to stir people up.

You could try http://dialup.com

I haven’t used it but I follow the artist/founder Baskin on Twitter and it seems like a really fun idea (as do most of her projects).

I mostly love the light in people's eyes so I don't see how making friends online could be easy for me. Maybe I'd join a poetry group.