The other evening, while in a dash to finish my work, I made the mistake of glancing at my smartphone. To my horror I discovered I had been added to four new WhatsApp groups.
The messaging was frantic. It felt like being dropped into a children’s party with a group of three-year-olds all clamouring for my attention.
To say this was disappointing is an understatement. I had added WhatsApp to my phone in the hope that it would become a discrete channel, diverting messages away from my overloaded email in-tray. Instead, like Mickey Mouse in the Disney cartoon Fantasia, commanding a broom to do his work, my shortcut did the reverse — instigating a deluge, in my case, of information.