If you have a smartphone, there is a 99.867% chance that you have WhatsApp.

OK, so that statistic is clearly fake news, just like a lot of what is spread on WhatsApp. But whatever the number is, it must be high.

Contrary to popular belief, WhatsApp is not just the preserve of teenagers, Jeff Bezos and people who seek to exploit its end-to-end encryption. Teachers use it too, and group chats are especially popular.

The staff WhatsApp group

Those groups seem like a good idea at first - it is an easy way to send updates, share ideas for lessons and organise trips to the pub. But it’s amazing how quickly it all starts to go wrong…

First, your phone never stops pinging as endless notifications arrive - a conversation about planning for sports day suddenly turns into someone sharing a picture of a baby, or their cat wearing a funny hat, or a question asking if anyone saw the latest episode of EastEnders. 

And so it begins: WhatsApp group hell. You are suddenly copied into every message sent in the school. 

WhatsApp hell

You put your phone down for two minutes and return to 293 unread messages. You’ve lost the thread of the conversation - you scroll up past GIF after GIF after GIF.

You realise that some people are communicating purely via GIFs.

One person is labouring under the misapprehension that you can send only a single line of text at a time - so they’ve sent 16 messages when they could’ve sent one.

Two people seem to be having an entirely private conversation among the other messages.

And then…that baby again. Whose baby is it? You daren’t ask for fear of initiating more messages and more photos.

What to do? You have to say something. 

So you scroll, getting the gist of it all, and then you do the only thing you can do. You type in a few random emojis - laughing face, confused face, monkey hiding face, prayer hands. 

That seems to work.

How to get your life back

What can we do about the staff WhatsApp group? How can we wean ourselves off it, initiate rules or survive it?

You could do the social media equivalent of sticking two fingers up at everyone and leave the group. Except you won’t do that, because: a) it’s rude; and b) FOMO (fear of missing out).

Stating that you think the group should be used for work purposes only will quickly get you ostracised. Don’t do it. 

Instead, if you’re already in a group, you can mute it by opening up the group chat, tapping the top of the screen (where the group name is) and hitting “mute” for the desired length of time.

However, as prevention is better than cure, it’s perhaps better to change your settings so that people will need to invite you to join their group in future.

This may make you a social outcast, but for your sanity, maybe that’s the best course of action. 

If I had a GIF of someone taking a bow, I’d insert it here (oh, wait, the editor has done it for me).