Feeling distant from her best friend after a busy month, Olivia Tan turned to a trending app called Bestify—a quiz game designed to help friends reconnect.

Bestify is a website that claims to strengthen friendships through engaging quizzes. Users can test how well they know each other, discover new insights about their relationships, and build stronger bonds. The platform is easy to navigate, making it accessible to anyone looking to deepen their connections with friends or just have fun. While some students say Bestify helps them feel more connected to their friends, others see it as just another internet trend. So, do friendship quizzes really build relationships, or are they just a fun distraction?

Tan, a seventh grader at Pin Oak, believes Bestify makes her relationships more meaningful. 

“I would say Bestify provides something that you can discuss with your friends or learn a lot more about through the questions they ask,” Tan said. 

For Tan, the quiz creates opportunities to have engaging conversations with her friends, helping her discover shared hobbies or surprising new things about them.

“I think it’s helped me overcome minor conflicts, like not knowing what to get them for their birthday or what their favorite color is,” Tan said. “You can learn a lot about them and what they prefer through Bestify.”

Ari Ohana, also a seventh grader, disagrees. 

“I don’t think testing your friendship should be a thing,” Ohana said. You should already trust your friends and know some things about them.” 

Ohana’s experience with Bestify was less than positive. 

“I did a Bestify for one of my friends,” Ohana said. “I got a really low, embarrassing score, and we had a small fight about it.’ 

While Tan finds value in the quiz, Ohana argues that trust and understanding come from direct communication, not a test. 

“Real friendships are built on conversations, not quizzes,” Ohana said.

Another concern Ohana brought up was cheating, which he believes undermines the point of the quiz.

“Every time you refresh the page, you can restart the quiz. So let’s say you get a question wrong, like ‘What’s my birthday?’ You could just refresh and already know the correct answer, which defeats the purpose,” Ohana said.

Tan, however, defends the quiz as a fun way to improve conversations and solve small problems. 

“It’s quick and effortless. I can find out what my friends like, and it makes talking to them more fun,” Tan said. “I think I would recommend it as something small and fun to learn about your friends and for your friends to learn about you.”

While Tan sees Bestify as a tool for building connections, Ohana views it as a superficial way to test friendships—one that doesn’t replace real communication or build trust.

“Bestify depends too much on AI-generated prompts,” Ohana said. “It feels like it’s missing a deeper level of connection. You should talk to your friends in person, not rely on a quiz to do the work for you.”

Eighth grader Saffana Zindani feels that Bestify isn’t just about getting the right answers, but about breaking the ice to start meaningful conversations. Zindani believes that it can help deepen connections by encouraging friends to open up and learn even more about each other.

“Whenever I do my friends’ Bestify, it helps us talk in real life because we have more to break the ice and talk about based on the Bestify questions and answers,” Zindani said.

Bestify even helped Zindani strengthen a personal relationship, showing that the quiz isn’t just about connecting with friends but also family.

“A time that Bestify helped improve my relationship was when my sister sent me a Bestify, and I got a 10 out of 10, and that really helped strengthen our bond,” Zindani said.

Sometimes the most unexpected events can lead to valuable connections. For Zindani, a simple interaction turned into something much more meaningful.

“A friend I barely knew sent me one, but I got a really good score, and that was a really unexpected way to boost our relationship,” Zindani said.

Zindani feels that Bestify helps her connect better with friends and family, but Wren Houston-Boston, a sixth grader, is more skeptical. She thinks the platform doesn’t deliver on its promises and can be more frustrating than enjoyable.

“I honestly thought all my friends would be mad at me because I didn’t know if they were on their For You page or on YouTube,” Houston-Boston said. “I think it didn’t meet the expectations that it would strengthen relationships because I feel like I know only some of the questions.” 

She didn’t get the help she was looking for; instead, it felt more like a competition. Houston-Boston got compared to others who scored higher on her friend’s Bestify quiz. 

“My friends are like, ‘Well, she’s a better friend than you,” Houston-Boston said.

For Houston-Boston, Bestify highlights her flaws instead of helping her connect with others. Instead of supporting her relationship, it makes it more stressful and frustrating than it should be. 

“Bestify makes it impossible to support relationships because I always have bad memory and always get a four,” Houston-Boston said. “Then my friends get mad at me for the rest of the day.” 

Just as the platform was gaining popularity at Pin Oak, it faced an unexpected setback: it was banned by the Houston Independent School District (HISD) because of concerns about safety and privacy. This ban highlighted how websites and platforms can suddenly be restricted. 

Anuar Rodriguez, Pin Oak’s IT Customer Representative, helped shed light on the district’s policies of banning websites. 

Rodriguez said that while Bestify doesn’t include inappropriate content, it’s not something students should be using on school computers or during school hours.

Friendship isn’t about scores or technology; it’s about honesty, openness, and real conversations. While students can get distracted by phones or social media, true friendships grow when people talk to each other face-to-face. For those feeling like they are drifting apart from a friend, setting aside devices and engaging in meaningful conversation might help rekindle that connection. In many cases, the connection that feels missing is closer than it seems.