Your Group Chat Needs a Closing Time

Every good establishment has hours. The bakery does. The bank does. Your sister’s thread with the cousins does not.

We love a group chat. It is where recipes go to be requested and never made. But at some point a tool for staying in touch became a small buzzing obligation that lives in your pocket and wants to show you a raccoon at 11:47 at night.

Proposed house rules

1. Quiet hours run from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., emergencies excepted.
2. A raccoon is not an emergency.
3. No one is required to respond to a photo of food.
4. Plans get made in one message by one person, who is then in charge and may not be questioned.
5. Muting is not rude. Muting is a form of self-care that also keeps you in the will.

The stage we all fear

Every family thread has one person who replies to each message, in order, at once, several hours late. We love that person. We ask only that they do it during business hours.