Group chat overload: have we reached peak WhatsApp?

Every morning before she leaves for work, Rosie, a 28-year-old physiotherapist, chats with her three housemates. Sometimes they commiserate or celebrate over the weather or football results; sometimes one of them has good news about a job interview to share or lets off steam about their latest dating app disaster.

As the honeymoon period wears off, WhatsApp is starting to feel like yet another workstream, on top of all those unanswered emails and voicemails you never get around to listen to. The blue-tick system that shows whether a message has been read by the recipient, which seemed so useful at first, has become a social etiquette minefield.