So far, I’ve gotten about 10 friends and family members in the US to download — and even check, sometimes — Whatsapp. I even have a family group!
This is a real accomplishment for me. As someone who came of age “technologically” (well, digitally at least) in Mexico, it’s hard to imagine any other way of communicating with people.
Text messages? Like, the ones that you could get charged for? No, thank you.
Indeed, most of the world uses Whatsapp, while the United States, Canada, and Australia have been slower adopters of the app.
You see, back when it cost money to send a text message — most Mexican plans now include them for free — the emergence of Whatsapp made a great alternative. Rather than watching one’s available credit go down with each message, the ability to send messages for free with only an app and an internet connection became exceedingly more appealing.
And in a country where even I would buy phone credit for 50-100 pesos at a time, up until a few years ago, WhatsApp stretches the amount of money one has to spend for a connection. In a place with wi-fi, even if you don’t have credit? You’re golden. Messages galore!
Nowadays in Mexico, you basically have to have WhatsApp. Absolutely nobody I know here sends regular text messages or even makes calls to their friends. The only text messages I get, actually, are to my US number. Occasionally, I’ll get some phishing messages from a Mexican number or codes from the bank. For all other short messages, WhatsApp is king.
How many times do I open WhatsApp on my phone a day? Honestly, it’s more than I’d like to admit. For short communication, it’s taken the place of text messages, phone calls, and emails. Plus, there’s so much functionality and it’s easy to use. If I want to make a phone call, for example, I can do that for free on WhatsApp too! It can even be a video call, and it is — you guessed it — free to do so.
Now, it’s got its downsides. If the wifi is spotty and you’re counting on that wifi, you might be on your own. And once Meta bought it, privacy concerns arose. At that point, though, so many people depended on it that they had little choice but to accept the new privacy policy if they wanted to keep the app that kept them in touch with pretty much everyone they knew.
But overall, it’s great. You can send GIFs, stickers and emoticons. You can change your background to whatever you want. You can form groups, and decide if other people will be able to respond or not in them (ha). You can even make “broadcast groups,” great for when lots of people want to be kept abreast of something. My partner and I use it, for example, to announce to our most faithful clients when a new batch of beer is ready!
It’s so functional in fact, that it can be hard to stay off of it even if you want to. Nowhere in my life has this been more evident than at my child’s school. Each class has its own WhatsApp group that the parents are a part of, apart from the overall “school announcements” broadcast groups. If you’re not paying attention, you might miss something important! (When I see dozens of messages, I just write to a friend — on WhatsApp — and beg for a summary; I do not have the patience to sort through all that.)
So what all can you do on this magical app that pretty much any Mexican with a cell phone uses? Well, let’s count the ways.
- Obviously, you can send messages — that’s the main thing. These messages don’t necessarily need to be typed out though, as voice messages are also common. I personally enjoy hearing people’s voices — when I’m in the quiet of my own home. But out in public, they usually have to wait until I can actually hear them.
- You can make calls, including group calls. Zoom? Ha, what for? You can make both voice and video calls on WhatsApp easily and put things in a chat during the call as well.
- You can create “statuses.” These are similar to Facebook “stories”: you can share memes, pictures and links that stay up for (I think) 24 hours. Honestly, I often forget to put anything in my status, as “social media”-type activities aren’t the main thing I use it for. But once in a while, I actually remember to link my articles in a status! You can also have cute little profile pictures and change them whenever you want. My current one is me howling at the moon, but I’ve been known to use actual normal pictures, as well as memes. Whatever you feel like!
- You can have text groups. On mine, I’ve got a family group where we coordinate care for my dad, the school group, and multiple groups of friends (“Señoras Desmadres,” a group of good mom friends, is the name I’m most proud of having come up with). In Xalapa we have a group to organize our “foreigner breakfasts,” and another group for people selling their personal wares. You can make a group for anything!
- You can do business. Most businesses in Mexico these days have a dedicated WhatsApp account. It’s how I schedule my pedicures and vet appointments, and also how I check on the progress of my Amazon packages. A combination of automated messages and actual messages makes it a great option, especially if all your customers are already using the app.
- You can still be mysterious. One feature that I don’t love, honestly, is that you can turn off the “blue checkmarks” that indicate to the other party if you’ve read their message or not. This is personally annoying to me because I want to know! Have they not read it yet or are they ignoring me? You can also turn on disappearing messages, annoying to me too, as I like to go back sometimes to find a piece of information that’s no longer there. Le sigh. And of course, you can block people.
So that’s it. If you’re in Mexico or coming to Mexico, be sure to download the app (I am not getting paid by Meta for this, I swear). Calls and regular messages are futile, as most people don’t even answer their cell phones these days or remember to look at their regular SMS.
Almost all non face-to-face communication takes place on WhatsApp in Mexico, so be ready! You might even get to see some fun memes.
Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sarahedevries.substack.com.
