How to Make a Video Call Less Awkward With Someone New
The first video call with someone new has a particular kind of dread to it. You hit join, the connection lands, and suddenly there are two faces filling the screen and a small frozen feeling while you both figure out who is going to talk first. It is the moment a lot of people quietly cancel on, or talk themselves into "let's just text," because a camera feels like more than they signed up for.
Most of that awkwardness is not about you being bad at conversation. It comes from the format, and the format can be managed. A little setup before you join, a couple of openers ready to go, and a plan for when something glitches will take the edge off before either of you says a word. Here is how to walk into a first video call without the dread running the show.
Why video feels more exposing than a voice call or text
Text gives you time. You can read a message, think, draft a reply, and delete it twice before sending. A voice call takes some of that cushion away, but you still get to do it from your couch in whatever state you are in, with your face entirely your own business. Video takes the last of the cover away. Your face is up there, their face is up there, and there is nowhere to look that is not part of the conversation.
What makes it worse is the self-view. Most apps show you a live thumbnail of yourself, and people end up watching their own face the whole time, hunting for a bad angle or a weird expression. That is a strange thing to do to yourself while also trying to listen to someone. So if video feels harder than it should, that is real, and a lot of it traces back to that little box of you in the corner. The next section deals with it directly. If the very idea of a real-time call sets off a low hum of anxiety, our piece on phone anxiety and the fear of phone calls covers where that comes from and how to dial it down.
The setup that removes half the awkwardness before you start
Three small adjustments do most of the work, and you can make all of them in the two minutes before you join.
Start with light. Put a window or a lamp in front of you, not behind you. Backlight turns you into a dark shape, which reads as distant and a little gloomy, and it makes the other person squint to find your eyes. A plain light source on your face means they actually see you, and being seen clearly is half of feeling at ease.
Next, sort out where you look. The instinct is to look at their face on the screen, but the camera sits above the screen, so you end up appearing to gaze slightly down and away from them. You do not have to stare into the lens the whole call, that gets intense fast. A good middle ground is to glance at the camera when you are the one talking, especially on a first hello, and watch their face when they are talking. Moving your video window up near the camera helps your eyes land in roughly the right place without thinking about it.
Last, hide your self-view. Almost every app lets you turn off or shrink the little preview of yourself. Do it. You would not bring a mirror to a coffee date and check it every few seconds, and the self-view is exactly that mirror. The other person still sees you fine; you just stop policing your own face and get to focus on them instead. This one change does more for first-call nerves than anything else on the list.
Openers and topics that get past the stiff first minutes
The first minute of a video call is the stiffest part, so it helps to not improvise it. Have a warm, low-effort opener ready so you are not staring at each other waiting for the conversation to start itself. Something simple works best: a genuine "hey, good to finally put a face to the name," or a quick comment on where they are calling from. The goal is just to break the seal and get two human voices going in the room.
From there, a tiny bit of shared logistics is your friend. Asking "can you hear me okay?" or noticing something behind them, a guitar, a plant, a bookshelf, gives you both an easy first exchange that does not feel like an interview. After that, lean on open questions about their day or what they have been up to, the kind that invite a real answer rather than a yes or no. If you want a deeper bank of openers and topics that translate straight to camera, we put them together in our guide on what to talk about on a first voice call with someone new. The same prompts work on video; you just have a face to read while you use them.
One more thing that quietly lowers the pressure: you do not have to fill every second. A first call can be short. Twenty good minutes beats a strained hour, and ending while it still feels easy leaves you both wanting the next one.
Handling silences and tech hiccups without spiraling
Silence on video feels louder than it is, because you can see the other person noticing it too. The trick is to treat a pause as normal instead of an emergency. A few seconds of quiet while someone thinks is part of every real conversation; it only turns into a problem when you panic and start apologizing for it. Keep a couple of easy fallback questions in your back pocket, like "what have you got going on this week?" so you always have somewhere to go. We wrote a whole guide on how to recover from an awkward silence if you want more ways to glide out of one.
Tech hiccups are the other thing that can throw a first call, and they are oddly useful when they happen. If the audio cuts out, someone freezes, or there is a lag echo, name it plainly and keep going: "you froze for a second, can you say that again?" A glitch is a shared little problem, and laughing about it together is one of the fastest ways two strangers loosen up. Before the call, a quick check of your mic and camera and a stable spot for your Wi-Fi prevents most of it. When something slips through anyway, treat it like a bump in the road rather than a sign the whole thing is going badly.
If the person on the other end is someone you find a bit daunting, a senior colleague, a date you really like, the nerves stack on top of the format. That is a separate skill worth having, and our guide on how to talk to someone you find intimidating is built for exactly those calls.
Where Bubblic fits
A lot of video-call dread is really about the jump from zero to face-to-face with someone you barely know. The camera asks for a lot all at once, before you have any sense of how the other person sounds or how the back-and-forth flows. Starting on voice first solves that. When you have already talked to someone by voice, even once, the connection has a little warmth in it, and switching the camera on later feels like adding to something that already exists rather than starting cold. Bubblic is a low-pressure, voice-first app that connects you with real people to talk to, with no profile to polish and no match to win, and it works across time zones, so the warm-up can happen before anyone points a camera at themselves. If you want to be more comfortable on screen, get comfortable in conversation first, and let video be the easy part that comes after.
The dread shrinks once you have a plan
You cannot make a first video call magically smooth, but you can take most of the sharp edges off it before you join. Light your face, fix where your eyes land, hide that self-view, walk in with an opener and a couple of fallback questions, and treat any glitch as a shared joke instead of a disaster. Do that a few times and the dread fades into something closer to mild curiosity about who is on the other side. Pick one upcoming call, set yourself up the way this guide describes, and notice how much of the awkwardness was just the format all along.
FAQ
How do you not be awkward on a first video call?
Most of it comes down to setup and a small plan. Light your face from the front so the other person can actually see you, hide the self-view so you stop watching your own face, and have a warm opener ready so you are not improvising the stiffest moment of the call. Keep two or three fallback questions in your back pocket for any lull, and let yourself off the hook for tech glitches and short pauses, since both are normal and neither means the call is going badly. A first video call can also be short, and ending it while it still feels easy is a good thing.
Where do you look on a video call?
The camera sits above your screen, so if you look at the other person's face the whole time, you appear to be gazing slightly down and away from them. A comfortable habit is to glance toward the camera when you are the one talking, especially during a first hello, and watch their face on screen while they talk. You do not need to stare into the lens, which feels intense for both of you. Moving your video window up close to the camera helps your eyes land in roughly the right place without you having to think about it.
What do you talk about on a video call with someone new?
Start light and let it build. A friendly opener, a quick comment on where they are calling from, or noticing something behind them like a plant or a bookshelf gives you an easy first exchange. From there, lean on open questions about their week or what they have been into lately, the kind that invite a real answer instead of a yes or no. The topics that work on a first voice call carry straight over to video, so the same prompts you would use without a camera will serve you here, just with a face to read while you talk.
How do you end a video call politely?
Wrap up on a warm note rather than letting the call sputter out. A simple "this was really nice, I should let you go, but let's do this again" signals the ending clearly and leaves things on a good feeling. If you want a next time, say so plainly while you are still on the call, since it is much easier than chasing it over text afterward. You do not owe anyone a long goodbye, and ending a little early while the conversation still has energy in it tends to leave both people glad they called.