WhatsApp groups impose immediacy. If we don’t respond immediately, if we stay behind, we are forgotten or frowned upon… This constraint creates an addictive relationship to the point of saturating our brain.
We create WhatsApp groups with his family, his colleagues, several circles of friends…As practical as they are, these conversations can be revealed invasive and exhausting. According to an American study conducted by Secure Data Recovery and relayed by HuffPost, 42% of Americans believe that belonging to a WhatsApp group represents extra work and 66% of them feel overwhelmed by this endless stream of notifications, messages and emojis. Still according to the study, an American spends on average 26 minutes a day reading and responding to messages. Time-consuming, isn’t it?
“We behave with our phone like an alcoholic with a glass of wine”
With WhatsApp, we are forced into perpetual immediacy of the exchange. The acronym “seen” informs the other members of the group of the time of our last connection, summoning us to respond. Gold, this permanent obligation to sociability exhausts us and causes anxiety. “Of course, we are social beings but like other human instincts and needs, sociability is not a constant need and it should not become so. It is as if we are forced to eat, sleep or have sex when we do not feel the need“, comments Véronica Olivieri-Daniel, clinical psychologist in Paris.
This constraint on continuity generated by WhatsApp groups created an addictive relationship, even though the smartphone itself is already an addictive object. “Today we behave with our phone like an alcoholic with a glass of winewe say to ourselves “this will be the last”, “I’ll stop during the weekend”. It has become a tool we depend on and like any addiction, we abuse it and this goes beyond the need that we may have for it. The fact that the telephone is a permanent receptacle of our social universe makes it all the more intolerable“she continues.
Leaving a WhatsApp group “awakens our fear of rejection”
When you leave a WhatsApp group, a message is automatically sent to other members of the group, which awakens our fear of rejection. “As in society, if we don’t speak, if we stay behind, we are forgotten rather than rejected. Removing yourself from a WhatsApp group therefore implies no longer existing in this abstract social universe. If we don’t respond, if we don’t participate, we will no longer be invited“, indicates the specialist.
It’s exactly like in a normal social universe when we are invited to a party and we always refuse, after a moment we are no longer invited. The only difference is that this is not a real exchange which appeals to the five senses but one immediate, ephemeral, non-sensory exchange and which is part of continuity. “Being the one who doesn’t respond means being left out of the group And getting back inside it takes a little courage because we have been absent until then. This feeling of exhaustion comes from any form of constraint to something that one does not need all the time”, specifies the clinical psychologist.
How to avoid having a WhatsApp “burn-out”?
Some people feel so asphyxiated by these omnipresent conversations that they have no other choice but to leave them. However, in practice it can prove difficult to assume as we have fear of the gaze of others. To limit the impact, it is appropriate:
- to identify conversations that are worth following in our eyes because it is useless to maintain a dialogue with people to whom we have nothing to say in real life
- just answer the original question that was asked
- of mute the group or even leave it completely for the most daring when the following 250 notifications do not concern us.
“When we are in a public square, what happens at the other end of the square does not concern us. Well, it’s the same thing! We participate in a group but not everything is addressed to us. If we stay out of simple fear of exclusion, we force ourselves into something for which we have no desire.“, illustrates Véronica Olivieri-Daniel.