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AS THE coronavirus pandemic shuts down public life on the streets, a new kind of life is opening up online. Many people who are lucky enough to still have their jobs are working from home, often experimenting with video chats and virtual offices for the first time. Students are attending classes and visiting friends online, too. Covid-19 could change the internet as profoundly as it is changing our handwashing habits.

Our arsenal of must-have apps has already started to shift. Almost overnight, the videoconferencing app Zoom has gone from obscurity to necessity. People are using it to hold meetings with colleagues, teach university classes and have quarantine-compliant cocktail hours with friends. For those who don’t want to be “Zoom-bombed”, where an unwanted person joins the video call by , there are video features you can use in Skype, Google Hangouts and Discord.

Popular streaming service Twitch, typically used to watch gaming live, has also had a rise in fortunes. It has suddenly become an all-purpose performance space, with musicians, writers and comedians all using it to broadcast live shows that they have had to cancel – and thanks to Twitch’s tipping and subscription functions, they can get paid for it, too.

There is an app for almost every kind of social event, and I am using as many of them as I can. My Dungeons & Dragons group now meets on Roll20, which lets us share a virtual game board. I used to set up extra chairs around the dining room table every Sunday evening, where my friends and I would spread out our maps, dice and snacks. Now most of the chairs are empty, and the table is covered in laptops instead: two for myself and my partner, and one for the Zoom session with our fellow adventurers.

To replace the experience of inviting people over for a movie night, there are countless apps for – though my pals and I simply fire up Hangouts with the sound off, texting and making faces at each other during painful scenes. Though it isn’t as good as an in-person visit, these gatherings have eased my loneliness and made the days more bearable.

“More and more, we’ll expect people in online spaces to behave like they would in an office or a park full of families”

Though we have had online video chat for years, it has always been a sideshow of most social media platforms. Now it is moving to the centre of our internet experience because it is connecting us with people we would ordinarily see in our day-to-day lives.

We want to feel like we are in the room with people we love and depend on, and seeing their faces makes the encounter feel more official and real. And in the age of coronavirus stay-at-home orders, many of us are seeing our doctors via video too.

Until recently, the internet was mostly a place of leisure. We went there for entertainment, news and catching up with friends, both distant and imaginary. Yes, it has always been a workplace for some of us, but now millions more people are using apps like Slack and Asana to talk to colleagues all day and organise projects. When the time comes that the majority of us rely on the internet for work, it is inevitable that we will have to take it more seriously.

There will always be some apps where anything goes, but more and more, we will expect people in online spaces to behave like they would in the office or a park full of families.

Of course, the internet could also become an even more powerful means of escape for the millions of people who have lost work in an economic apocalypse that is almost as terrifying as covid-19 itself. With nothing to lose, shut in our homes, we may be vulnerable to extremist manipulation.

After the pandemic is over, the internet won’t feel as much like an imaginary realm any more. It will be as real as a pay cheque – and that might actually make us demand more accountability from our favourite social apps.

Before the outbreak, abuse and fake information spread like wildfire on these platforms because very few people considered digital goings-on to be vitally important. But when so many of us have gone online to do our work or see our quarantined loved ones, internet falsehoods won’t seem as harmless.