We All Suck at Group Texting
With emotions running high and messages easily misinterpreted, here’s how to keep the thread from getting awkward
In one of her ongoing group texts, Amanda has been participating in what’s become the pandemic version of small talk: She shared an update of how her family was holding up against the spread of coronavirus. Her dad, in Texas, was still going into the office every day. Her sister had gone ahead with a planned gender-reveal party. Her mom was on lockdown in the hospital and couldn’t have visitors.
“You could hear the crickets,” says Amanda, 41 (she requested that her last name be withheld for privacy). Holed up in her home in Los Angeles, she waited for her friends to reply. And then, after an initial silence, the comments came flooding in: “How could my sister be so selfish? How could [my dad] still go to work?” Someone shared a link to an article about Patient 31, who was at the center of an outbreak in South Korea. No one mentioned anything about Amanda’s mother, though two friends later texted her privately to check in. She’d wanted a chance to commiserate; instead, she felt attacked.
The experience, Amanda says, changed the way she approached the group chat, which she’d previously used to freely share her thoughts with a collection of friends. “After my…
