The joy of WhatsApp is equal to the pain. The fabulous immediacy, the ability to elicit info from someone without the rigmarole of establishing the conversation. There’s no, “Hi, how are you?” “Yeah, I’m fine,” nonsense. If you need to find out what time a friend is arriving you don’t have to ascertain, for the sake of politeness, whether their daughter has recovered from that cough. You can just type “ETA?” And that’s not rude. If you phoned them up and just said “ETA?” that would be rude.

Indeed, WhatsApp and other instant messaging services have now made the very idea of just calling someone unacceptable. If you need to make a call you have to message first to check that they are happy to receive it. Nowadays, if someone phones unannounced we look at their name popping up and wonder: “What the hell do they want?” But a message, that’s no problem.

The Telegraph London