Whats(App) is to blame?

In the article, the author, who is also a parent shares how WhatsApp Chat groups, which used to be useful, are starting to become "too much" to handle.

As I read what she wrote, I also began to draw parallels with my own experience as a working adult of having to manage the ever growing chat groups at work. However, if we were to peel away the layers of emotions, chat groups are nothing more than social platforms that provide the technological infrastructure to allow several parties to communicate at the same time. I've found chat groups, including Telegram, to be extremely useful when you need to locate certain information or when you can turn to a community easily. Therefore, WhatsApp fulfil our basic need to belong and communicate.

However, similar to money, chat groups take on the character of the people who are using it. Money is merely an instrument for transaction between willing buyer and willing seller. When it falls into the hands of the honest, good things happen and vice versa. Therefore, right at the heart of it all, our pleasant or not so pleasant experience with WhatsApp is related to the communication (or the lack of) inside each group.

We're all too familiar with the horror stories; bosses who conveniently send a message to demand for answers at 11pm, inappropriate media being sent through class chat groups, overwhelming and lengthy instructions that we've got to keep (scrolling) up to, waking up to 200 messages and getting lost in translation (literally at times) and the list goes on. There's only so much an admin can do and if it's a work chat group, unless the person with the greatest power in the chat group garners some self-awareness, the rest in the chat would have muted the group since last month.

Chiming on how the author concluded the article, we need to know when to engage and when to step out of it for our sanity.

https://www.schoolbag.edu.sg/story/127-messages-and-counting