When I was little, I thought hell was a fiery pit beneath the Earth’s surface. The image was vivid: flames, tortured souls and a cartoonish devil with a pitchfork.

Now that I’m an adult, I know better. Hell is actually a parent WhatsApp group.

The parent WhatsApp group – known colloquially as Satan’s Slack channel – is one of those parenting surprises no one warns you about. People tell you about the sleepless nights, the lost identity and the toys that reproduce overnight. But no one says: “You’ll one day discuss nits with 30 adults as though global peace depends on it.”

What began as a simple way to share school updates has mutated into a relentless stream of chatter. There are simply too many messages. You wake up to messages, you go to sleep to messages, you duck into a meeting and come back to 64 unread notes about sunscreen. Linda has posted the same information seven times because she doesn’t trust anyone to read it. Which, to be fair, is accurate.

When I was growing up my parents got information the old-fashioned way: crumpled notes in backpacks and gossip at pickup. They weren’t part of a digital........

© The Guardian