The problem with ‘important’ messages is always the same: Everybody defines ‘important’ in an different way.
Compared to - let’s say the 80s or beginning of the 90s — almost all messages declared as being ‘important’ nowadays would have been unsignificant. If you had to discuss something, you would take your time to communicate in person and remain focused.
The perception of things, events, significance has changed immensely. Most of the people I know, spend an huge amount of time on scrolling through ‘important’ news or chatting (sometimes even annoyingly loud in the public) with ‘friends’ or other people about most intimate topics, which are only significant for themselves.
The loss of “self-awareness” and the ability to distinguish between what is essential and what is not, as well as the (self-imposed) urge or compulsion to be present everywhere and at all times and to have a say in everything, lead to such absurd discussions.
A self-‘aware’ and independent person would hardly torment themselves by having to sift through hundreds of messages to find the truly, truly important ones; instead, they would limit themselves to those and, at most, selectively expose themselves to the rest of the junk that rains down on them every day.
The significance of WhatsApp as such has many different aspects. One of them strikes me as essential: A life without WhatsApp is entirely possible—and, as terrible as it may sound, it can have positive consequences for one’s own well-being.
But the whole matter is, of course, complicated by human hypocrisy and our increasing inability to take control of our own lives, to assess situations adequately, to evaluate them objectively, to devote our attention to a single thing for more than 10 seconds, and so on.
Ultimately, each person decides for themselves whether or not to bow to social pressure.
B.t.w.: Another typical example is alcohol (note: I enjoy drinking it now and then—in moderation)—it is just as much a drug as cannabis, cocaine, or other psychoactive substances, and yet it would hardly ever occur to anyone to refer to alcohol as a drug.
