I f you want to completely bore a child, try telling them about how there were only four TV channels when you were growing up. Or that if you wanted to hear a pop song you had to buy a physical copy, or sit by your boombox – yes, boombox – listening to the radio with your finger hovering over the record button, hoping the DJ wouldn’t talk over any of it and that you wouldn’t end up in prison for piracy.

To that eye-glazing list we can now add that once upon a time, if you were attempting to make plans with a bunch of friends, you had to message every single one of them individually. Can you even imagine, sonny? This was back in the prehistoric period, before the invention of the group chat.

Nowadays, 71% of British people use this method to organise their social lives, according to a survey . Apparently, we each contribute to, on average, 151 group chats a year.…