Our group is named, perhaps wistfully, for the reasonably priced bottle of Italian red table wine we used to drink together in our 20s
![Where would I be without my group chat? In praise of my WhatsApp group | Sophie Brickman](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/fca2bab66b5462af035c41bcc8dec20e9de1deca/0_18_3868_2321/master/3868.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctb3BpbmlvbnMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=b18b1995d34f4004b4e5e0d7cc074548)
My
WhatsApp chain, started six years ago with three girlfriends, has been my lifeline during this bizarre year. OK fine, it was my lifeline pre-pandemic, too, because I am the mother of three children under five-and-a-half, which means my in-person social life has been naturally curtailed for ages. (And you may reasonably ask, can you really call it a “social life” if the vast majority of one’s non-work time involves reading Clifford for President five times in succession to a listener who insists on wearing her diaper as a hat?)
But as any fellow group texter knows, our chains got an extreme hit of adrenaline during the pandemic. One study found that WhatsApp saw a 40% increase in usage, and another that 78% of consumers reported texting to be their most frequent pandemic
smartphone activity.