WhatsApp is the digital scaffolding for much of the global South

BEFORE WHATSAPP WENT dark yesterday, the last messages I sent were to my editor in London, my doctor here in Mexico City, and to the family group chat, asking whether my father—recovering from COVID-19 back home in Pakistan—had finally tested negative. For me, WhatsApp is as much a verb as Google, and the platform is the engine that fuels my personal and professional lives. Sometimes, despite being thousands of miles away from my family, my WhatsApp groups seem like the rooms of my childhood house: Here is my mother in one corner, fretting over my father’s cavalier attitude toward the pandemic; here is an uncle nobody likes, talking about some secret conspiracy against Islam; here are my cousins sending voice notes laced with laughter, virtually re-creating a summer sleepover; here is my grandmother, reminding me to pray.

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