Strong connections with friends, family, and the community make people feel secure and happy. They provide support and a sense of purpose. Having a good connection with other people is vital for physical and mental well-being and can even keep depression and anxiety at bay.
It’s normal to feel lonely if you’ve lost touch with a person who was important to you. Loneliness is the feeling of missing quality relationships. With age, changes in lifestyle and personal circumstances can make people yearn for connection because the risk of loneliness increases. Such is the power of connection.
Loneliness is not unavoidable. You can do many things to fortify and grow your social networks, like search for people online.
The first step
Before you can begin, you must know what information you’re looking for. If you’re mainly interested in getting contact details, the search won’t be hard at all. You only need to check the white page directory.
Enter as much data as you can to use online white pages effectively. As a minimum, you’ll need a first name and a last name, as well as a city or state.
Online white pages have address and phone information and an email in some cases. However, the data might not be current because they don’t purge their databases often.
Specialized services
Moving beyond this very basic search: you’ll find a host of platforms with genealogical information if you’re trying to find a family member. You need the person’s last name and location to check the records.
There are platforms with information about alumni of colleges and universities. You enter your graduation year, and your school, and the platform delivers information about former classmates. You might even be reminded of people you knew. Classmate lists help with the issue of names before and after marriage. You might remember the person’s maiden name, but not if they got married and perhaps changed it.
Other specialized search platforms include those with a focus on specific occupational groups, like lawyers, real estate agents, doctors, etc. You could check the alumni lists if you’re looking for someone who went to a particular school.
If your search subject wanted to be a lawyer, you could try to track them down via a specialized directory for attorneys. Keep in mind not all of these databases are available to the general public.
Use different search engines
You’ve probably tried a search engine, but you need to try several. Search engines provide people with content by sorting through hundreds of millions of active websites. The ideal search engine does not exist. The most popular ones are Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Bing delivers far fewer results than Google, but they are more targeted.
Yahoo has a search feature as a component of a broad range of services, which also includes shopping and news.
You can turn to niche search engines such as Dogpile, Ecosia, and DuckDuckGo.
People finders
Paid services like people finders (also called people search engines or background check sites) can help you complete your search. They provide a lot of useful information because they collect data from numerous sources, such as real estate property records, court records, and others that aren’t easily accessible.
They compile all the information to build a detailed profile of your search target. You might find paying a flat fee very useful.
How to choose a platform
If you decide to use a people finder, read reviews and evaluations and check different descriptions on forums, boards, and networks like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Quora, etc. Look for a user-friendly site and read the details about pricing very carefully. Don’t sign up for a subscription if you only want to do a single search.
What to do when you find them
You might be scoping out someone you already know to get more information about them or trying to reconnect with an old friend. In the latter case, reach out to them. Send a text or a message saying hello and asking them how they are doing. You could bring up an old memory you shared. Tell them you’d love to catch up sometime soon.
If they reply, be straightforward and ask when and where they want to meet. Maybe they wanted to find you too. Call them if you have a number, or text if you’re afraid calling is too intrusive. Make concrete plans before more time goes by.
