Hey, what’s up? …
Hi there! How’s it going? …
Hello (friend’s name.) What have you been up to? …
Hey man! How’s school going? …

Anyone else tired of sending these messages and just not knowing how the heck to carry on a decent conversation with your middle school friends?

We aren’t pretending to be conversation experts or have the most brilliant ideas, but we want to help you keep connecting with your middle school friends. A few starter tips for texting middle schoolers:

• Don’t give up. Even if they don’t reply, they see you reaching out, and we believe that matters.
• Embrace the awkward. Need I say more?
• Group message them with their parents until you’ve earned the family’s trust. Then, consider group messaging them with their friends. In the same way that middle schoolers don’t always love to be cornered into a 1-1 convo in person, it’s helpful to loop their friends in on virtual chatter too.
• Don’t shy away from sharing scripture or asking for prayer requests. I sometimes feel awkward “forcing” my middle school friends to talk about God, but throughout the pandemic, I’ve been shocked by their positive responses to these types of conversations.

AND NOW, here are 30 random questions you can use to text your middle school friends this month.

1. What are you looking forward to today?
2. What do you like / not like about school this year?
3. If you were the teacher for one day, what would you teach? What would you do differently?
4. What do you like to do the most during the weekends?
5. What type of music do you listen to? What’s your favorite song right now?
6. Do you like reading books? What’s the last book you read?
7. What is something you like to do when you’re bored?
8. How would you describe your perfect day?
9. If you had to make dinner for yourself, what would you make?
10. If you were stranded on a desert island, which one possession would you want to have with you?
11. What is one thing you wish other people knew about you?
12. What’s your favorite place to hangout? What do you like about it?
13. Who is someone you feel like you couldn’t live without? What makes them so important to you?
14. If someone gave you $1,000 and said you had to give it to charity, which charity would you choose and why?
15. What’s your family like? How would you describe being in your family?
16. What was the last argument you had with someone about?
17. If you could date any celebrity, who would it be?
18. Are you more of an indoor person or outdoor person? Why?
19. Who is someone you admire or look up to? What do you like about them?
20. What is something you’re good at?
21. What is something you’re afraid of?
22. What is your favorite meal and dessert?
23. What do you usually eat for lunch on school days?
24. If you could have an unlimited supply of any food for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
25. What is the weirdest food you have ever eaten? Where and when did you eat it?
26. What is your favorite item of clothing? What do you love about it?
27. What is the last thing that made you laugh?
28. What are three things that you are grateful for today or this week?
29. What is the most difficult thing in your life right now?
30. What’s the best thing about being a teenager?