Where would I be without my group chat? In praise of my WhatsApp group | Sophie Brickman

Our group is named, perhaps wistfully, for the reasonably priced bottle of Italian red table wine we used to drink together in our 20s

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.