For many of us, group chats are part of the fabric of our social lives. These groups, formed on apps like Messenger or Whatsapp, can be as large as a hundred people or as small as three.
We use them for organizing individual tasks or events, managing repetitive coordination between groups such as sports clubs or work groups, and maintaining contact with family and friends.
In the best cases, group chats can provide important spaces for construction and maintenance relationships. They can be places of joy, solidarity and refuge.
But they can also be burdensome and create feelings of anxiety and worry. I researched group chat dynamics and these are the three biggest problems I encountered.
1. You are overwhelmed by the volume of messages
The volume of messages and notifications generated by group chats can be overwhelming.
In my own researchone participant recalled accidentally leaving her phone at home and returning to find she had lost 200 messages in a group chat about buying a birthday present.
Another explained that their most active group chat started at 8am. and didn’t calm down until 01:00.
Recent overview of people in the United States and the United Kingdom suggests this is a common problem, with 40% of respondents saying they were inundated with group chat messages and notifications. And then there is notifications from email, social media, calendars, news apps and so on.
People often manage this by closing group chats. But that can mean missing out on important information or plans to catch up, or having to dip in and out of the group chat to check for related conversations.
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People can also find the chaos of group chats overwhelming. In large groups, many conversations can be going on at the same time, making it difficult to follow what is being discussed or planned.
These problems can create group chats ineffective for the tasks they were set to complete. Especially in large dating groups, planning can turn into a mess of opinions, alternatives, and side conversations.
One research participant described to me a group conversation about a birthday present that was hijacked by two people who had their own coverage.
Another recounted a disastrous group chat involving 20 people trying to organize a mud dinner. Instead of coming to a consensus on who would bring what, the discussion turned into a debate about whether potlucks were a bad idea, with one person insisting that professional catering would better take dietary requirements into account.
2. You don’t want to be there – but you can’t leave
Other, possibly more important, challenges are the difficult or awkward social dynamics that can arise. The ease of creating groups and adding members means that people can be included in groups they would not have chosen to join.
In one case From this, a woman was added to a group for organizing a joint gift for a colleague. She would have preferred not to contribute to the gift, but she found it too inconvenient to leave.
Kev Costello/Unsplash
Challenging dynamics can also arise when relationships change after a group chat is established.
One participant told me about a group chat started by four close friends when they started university. A year later, one person had distanced himself and become largely silent on the group chat, although the other three still used it to chat and organize catch ups. My participant found this dynamic incredibly uncomfortable and had become cautious about initiating group conversations as a result.
Other participants described feeling trapped in group chats that they would prefer to leave. The blunt “x has left the group” notification made them hesitant to officially leave, but ignoring the group was also awkward.
Many of these challenges stem from rigid participation in group conversations (whether you’re in or out) that doesn’t always mesh with the complexity of our relationships. These challenges can also be exacerbated by unclear or questionable social etiquette around group messaging.
3. You feel excluded
The most difficult issues arise when social exclusion processes take place in group chats.
Rear channel groups may appear where some group members create a new group to communicate privately about what is happening in the main chat.
In the most dramatic cases, participants described people being kicked out of groups because of disagreements or because someone felt the group chat had become too long.
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Research suggests that leaving a group is rare and occurs mostly when a relationship has ended.
But guessing if you’ve been banned from a group chat can be stressful, especially since you might not just be missing out on gossip and cat videos, you’re planning to meet the difference up close.
Dimitri Karastelev/Unsplash
So what can you do?
Our relationships with each other can be weird, awkward and messy – group chats reflect this social reality, but with an added layer of technological sophistication.
Generally, research suggests that the group chats people enjoy most are smaller groups with closer friends.
So until the app design improves and we collectively figure out the etiquette for awkward group chat moments, your best bets are:
use group chats with a few people who know each other or who you’re sure will get along
find another way to organize this potluck. Use other forms of organization for more complex events or with larger groups (invites, Facebook events or one-on-one texts)
Mute those crazy conversations if you’re having a hard time distracting yourself or just aren’t that interested. Silence is commonplace and increasingly expected. If the chat is often used to organize things you don’t want to miss, let someone on the team know so they can update you or do a routine check in
if you feel curious about some group chat social dynamic, discuss it with the person in the group you know best. We can make a lot of assumptions about what other people’s messaging behaviors mean, but the lack of additional social cues means our assumptions may be inappropriate. This person may not be avoiding you – they may just mute the conversation!
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