I will be attending my freshman year of college this coming fall and I was wondering something... How do people remain close to friends after college?

A lot of people say they stayed best friends after college... how do they do that if they live say 3+ hours away? When people were in high school, they would all be relatively close together. That is not usually the case after college. This is just something that has been bothering me lol. What if you live nowhere near any of your friends? There has to be people out there like that.

Social media mainly. And then planning trips to see each other over your breaks, whether you meet them in your hometown, or decide to travel together to a new place you guys haven't been before and explore this new town/city together. I've been friends with the same group of people my whole life so far, but I will tell you that some of us have drifted and are not as close because we don't relate to each other as much as we used to (new life experinces and perspectives, new social circles, etc).

I'm also going to College in the fall this year. I wish I had friends to keep in touch with. Well, OK, I have friends. But nobody I particularly want to keep in contact with. High school was not my time to shine.
Social Media is mainly it, but even then I have a few friends who went off to college and eventually our friendship just died out. There was no drama, it just didn't last. It's a hard life transition. If you're worried about making new friends: don't be! I've already met some great new people going to my school, and I'm super excited to get to know them.

I think the largest way to remain close is effort. If both people put in effort to see and talk to one another, the closeness will stay. In a true friendship, however, the effort won't have to be so forced. If you feel like you have to force the relationship, even over social media, then maybe it isn't worth the energy. You could be putting yourself towards a better friendship in college instead of clinging to one from your teenage years.

I keep asking myself that question too OP. I'm going into my second year, and I have a pretty decent friend group. But I don't really reach out to them cause i'm not one to start conversation, and they also don't so there's just nothing going on. I feel like if we survive these four years together we're all just gonna go our separate ways and not really grow to be together again.

Also from what I know of adulthood, the lifelong friends you make happen typically at work when you're all just starting out together, or at chance meetings in random places lol.

Some people I know go to their hometown in the weekends and come back absolutely exhausted, I usually do the opposite, I go home to relax.

Is someone considered a friend when all you did with them was talk to them every day during the hour break between classes? Maybe that's more of a close acquaintance than a friend. But anyway, I didn't keep in touch with any of those people.

I would guess that to keep a relationship with old college friends would require a lot of effort. Lots of messaging, texting, calling. This may not be the case for you, as maybe you're a ton more charismatic and attractive than I am, but keeping friends for me always felt very one-sided because nobody else makes any effort in return and I start to feel like a pestering nuisance, then I just give up completely and the relationship fizzles away.

Mostly Facebook and occasionally cross country trips for hanging out.

I always felt like a pestering nuisence before I even made a phone call. That makes it kind of hard to keep contact.

Social media. If your friends don't like your kah-uuuute new selfie profile pic nor wish you a happy birthday, they were never really your friend and you should cut that negative energy out of your life ASAP.

It's hard, let's be honest. I kept in contact with most of my college friends for about a year. After that we mostly just stayed connected through social media. But I've recently deleted most of my social media accounts, so we probably won't connect much unless through exchanging texts or calls.