A typical WhatsApp user uses the app in the same way that they breathe air and drink water: throughout the day and without much thought. This goes even for Tory MPs, whose correspondence is so frequently leaked that reading it now feels less like being privy to the machinations of the elite and more like being part of a never-ending stag do or hen party group chat that won’t stop dinging and can’t be muted.
The messaging service – founded in 2009 – has 40 million users in the UK. On average, we each spend nine hours on it per month, with those nine hours distributed between brief glances and sporadic bursts of activity. It is not only government that is conducted by group chat, but other central parts of human life: our friendships, our family lives, our exchange of memes. The format of a group chat gives us the liveliness of real-time raillery, but it also inflicts on us the annoyance of unnecessary messaging. A case in point: your five-a-side team’s most reliable blockhead being able to ask “Where are we meeting again?” of 20 people at once. It’s an option he deems preferable to scrolling up.
