Is it just ME

Or is being able to make a discreet exit from WhatsApp a joy?

I’D SWITCHED my phone off for an hour to get some work done and am alarmed when it pings 79 unread WhatsApp notifications the moment I turn it on.

My heart lurches, imagining some urgent family drama I’ve been ignoring. Instead, I’m bombarded with messages from a long, chatty conversation on a mums’ group, comparing which brand of sunscreen is best in hot weather. I resist the urge to throw my phone out of the window.

The speed which messages flood into my phone on WhatsApp can make it feel like a boiling kettle.

Ping, go half a dozen messages from one of the endless different parenting groups I’ve been drawn into, the book group I never attend or a friend’s fund

I don’t want to have to apologise for leaving a group chat I never asked to be in

raising ultramarathon chat. With five children, there are endless school groups and I’ve lost count of the number set up for ‘birthday drinks’ I won’t make.

The news, therefore, that WhatsApp is introducing a feature to allow users to quietly exit a chat without everyone receiving a rather dramatic notification that ‘Clover Stroud has left the group’ is music to my ears.

My friend Erin is part of a group called ‘Da Mumz’ set up by a school-gate mum, which should, theoretically, be useful, but which she has muted as the name alone makes her cringe.

I don’t want to have to make apologies for leaving a group I never asked to be part of in the first place.

It feels like the virtual equivalent of storming out of a room and slamming the door. Perhaps, like my 21year-old son, I should doggedly stick to a Nokia mobile. When I asked him why he didn’t have a smart phone, he said: ‘I don’t want to be part of all those WhatsApp groups you always complain about.’

He has a point.