Why you should stop creating pointless WhatsApp groups (and invite friends to join).

Thanks to the fundamental millennial experience of growing up watching Facebook events — and then watching them fall — friends are increasingly using WhatsApp to organize their social calendar. Groups turn up for everything from bachelorette parties and holidays to simple dinners. And we’re being plunged deeper and deeper into notification chaos — not to mention a growing social dilemma.

Don’t get me wrong, I often love WhatsApp groups. There are so many brilliant uses, from nurturing transatlantic friendships to vital day-to-day contact with WFH freelancers. Then there’s the all-important group chat — you know the one I mean. Obscurely named, inscrutably abused and your go-to place for everything from fashion advice to AITA therapy.

Interest groups like book clubs, local support networks during lockdown and of course the ubiquitous family chat, are stages of both the strongest bonds and the smallest drama usually sparked by intergenerational misunderstandings and dad’s inability to read his phone.

But then there’s the meeting-this-could-have-been-an-email version. An engaged group for dinner. From just three people. Two of them live together. Groups for one-off events where simply copying and pasting the details for all invitees would have sufficed. And before you accuse me of some kind of bitter boast — “she should consider herself lucky to be invited to anything” — consider that there’s a darker side.

Friends describe the embarrassment of leaving a partner’s WhatsApp family group after a breakup. The pain of realizing that your place in the IRL group is nowhere near as secure as the almost daily banter would have you believe. The inevitable neighborhood chat with racist undertones and poisonous nimbyism. The creeping paranoia – often justified – of a splinter group, a VIP room, a behind-your-back group. The constant, excruciating pressure of being “caught up” and having to react to everything, everything, in multiple groups at the same time.

According to the latest statistics, WhatsApp is the most popular of all social media, with around half of UK internet users participating in chat. But while 73 percent of all WhatsApp users work with it for more than half an hour a day on average, only 39 percent believe it has a positive impact on their lives.

Recent privacy policy changes are noticeably worrying users, driving them to Signal or Telegram. Who among us doesn’t live in fear of our WhatsApp group contents being made public since that bad-art-friend-kidney viral story revealed just how nasty we can be? The search feature makes it far too easy to find past indiscretions — and screenshots too easy to share.

This is not a purely digital phenomenon to be solved by simply hanging up our phones. WhatsApp groups are increasingly symbiotic with real life in a way Facebook events never were. They can artificially prolong a friendship dynamic, forcing you to coexist — and socialize IRL — in groups that may no longer fit together. If you organize the event in a group, the whole group will be invited. Even if you’re not really a group. And you find that the natural progression of a relationship over time, the ebb and flow and the occasional drifting apart, are interrupted. Would you still be in regular contact if you weren’t forced to?

Poor WhatsApp etiquette can also spoil dynamics, as tone is misjudged without the visual cues of long-term familiarity. Affectionate sneering can read as an insidious dig. Brisk efficiency as rudeness. Absence as disinterest.

News gets overlooked in the hustle and bustle of daily life, and you’re accused of ‘ignoring’ someone’s breakdown. Trying so hard to be a good friend that you’re always willing to say an “I’m so sorry, that sucks” when you know that’s not really enough, but you’re at work and it there’s no chance for a hug.

Thanks to the latest WhatsApp or Meta updates, you can now easily archive groups instead of muting them individually. But that still hasn’t solved the etiquette dilemma of…how to leave the group? Are we forever trapped in some kind of sorcerer’s apprentice situation as the water levels of archived groups continue to rise? Or do we take the plunge, leave and then delete from routine?

There seem to be only two other options. Write down the relevant information and immediately leave with a short “Great, see you soon! Xx” – or go back months later when the chat is good and quiet, exhume yourself like an old corpse and pray no one notices. The latter risks appearing as a professional nostalgic; The former like a total slut. Of course, neither works for regular groups.

For these, there may be a third option. Write an article bemoaning the struggle to leave WhatsApp groups and find out your friends saved you the trouble.