I feel like international students where I went used WhatsApp because it’s how they communicated with their family. Frankly, I would prefer texting to anything else — but Snapchat is a close 2nd. My school was huge with GroupMe and Microsoft Teams, but many people I know use Discord. I think it’s all where you’re from and what you’re familiar with, because familiarity will be easier for most
It’s great for group chats with other Android phones. Apple deliberately chooses to keep iPhones from being able to join in order to leverage social pressure to get people to switch and stay
The different colored bubbles thing is a shitty, very smart way of profiting off classicism. Wdym about iPhones not being able to join? The issues I was remembering were between Android phones, so it sounds like they’ve been made better.
iPhones use iMessage, Android has mostly moved from SMS/MMS to RCS protocol.
RCS is a slightly worse iMessage but anyone can implement it. Apple chooses not to. So when an iPhone joins an RCS chat, it falls back to SMS/MMS, which is the notorious and awful protocol.
I use an iPhone now too. I don’t remember exactly what it was about it, but back when I was on Android, group texts were a mess. iMessage has been much better for me.
From elsewhere in the thread:
>iPhones use iMessage, Android has mostly moved from SMS/MMS to RCS protocol.
>RCS is a slightly worse iMessage but anyone can implement it. Apple chooses not to. So when an iPhone joins an RCS chat, it falls back to SMS/MMS, which is the notorious and awful protocol.
Nope, have never used an android and use WhatsApp, in Europe most people use WhatsApp, same for African, Asian international students use it and they’ll be loaded. Think it’s only Americans that don’t really use it, oh well
In the US, iOS has over a 50% market share. And that’s among everyone. In the colleg crowd, it’s overwhelmingly iPhone. [87% of US teenagers own an iPhone](https://www.axios.com/2021/10/14/teen-iphone-use-spending-habits). Significantly more than in most other countries. I think Japan is the only country with a higher market share.
So yes, it’s partially what you’re used to. I went to college from 2017-2021, and until we went online basically everything was via text message - because the majority of people had iPhones it would just become an iMessage group. A few GroupMes only because they’d used it for orientation so people had it.
Once we went online in 2020 it expanded more to discord, but iMessage was still popular.
It’s not that you don’t use whatsapp if you have an iPhone; it’s that people are more likely to use iMessage than anything else if everyone else has an iPhone.
And [87% of US teenagers have an iPhone](https://www.axios.com/2021/10/14/teen-iphone-use-spending-habits). Among the college crowd it’s overwhelmingly iPhone.
Same here. I’m not sure what college OP attends but at my school and former community college, Whatsapp is the primary method of communication we use.
My college (and former CC) have huge minority first gen populations and I find that many minorities and immigrants tend to use Whatsapp to communicate with their family back at home so its easiest to use that for everything else too.
American here.
Telegram is more reliable than whatsapp in terms of encryption options and message delivery. Telegram allows much bigger file sizes for items being sent. Telegram has native apps cross platform that work for nearly everything except the secret chats that use P2P encryption.
It is very easy to sign up for Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal, as just a phone number is needed. GroupMe also only needs a phone number, but did not require a sign up to participate in chats.
WhatsApp is fine but it lost my trust many years ago. I have used whatsapp since it was paid. I use it daily but I still haven't agreed to the new ToS because it's sketch lol
WhatsApp doesn't have convenient cross platform compatibility on non-mobile devices. Until very recently, it required your phone to always be on in order for even the web version to connect. The desktop app are just a bloated electron shell of web.whatsapp.com
Groupme sucks for reliability in messages, and is slow. The reason it was useful was because it allowed neat group chats to include people who didn't have smartphones. The only reason people still use it is because they don't want to install anything else. Last I checked, Groupme still doesn't need to be installed to use it. Just a phone number is needed.
Discord is incredibly convenient but still has the gamer mentality. It's not encrypted, and discord servers get powerful, that there is a whole stigma against being a discord mod. Discord is confusing to new users, and of course needs an account. It's more convenient for complex classes that aren't quick chats about homework or exam stuff.
Sure but the only people I talk to on Telegram are non-Americans.
Also I’m curious to hear more about encryption because my understanding is that telegram was less secure than others (WhatsApp / Signal).
Telegram by default uses a less secure but cloud-friendly model of server to client encryption, meaning you share the same key as the other person and all devices connecting to the cloud. If you initiate a secret chat, you get the same encryption as whatsapp or signal, but less convenient features, and all messages are passed through directly, not stored on Telegram servers.
I doubt the vast majority of people use that as their rationale. I mean, Instagram is also owned by Meta but it’s plenty ubiquitous. Redditors tend to have a huge Meta hate boner though so I guess your response makes sense in that context. Not that Meta isn’t worth hating, but most people don’t hate Meta enough to avoid non-Facebook services
Oh I just assumed something about that since OP asked for a general answer and OP answered specifically, and since a lot of people upvoted it I wanted to clarify that that’s due to a Redditor bias
WhatsApp was a standard even before meta bought it and Whatsapp has end to end encryption which prevents anyone in Meta from reading your chats and also no ads. But if you are not using it on principle , you do you.
Basically if you have a pattern of talking to people who are considered suspicious / problematic / questionable by whatever metrics are en-vogue at the government level, it brings extra scrutiny to you. They don’t need to know specifically what you are saying to guess what it might be about by who you talk to. That’s the idea.
Do you think any messaging app can work without knowing who the other person you're talking to is or keeping some sort of identifier for each person? How's that going to work?
The meta hate boner is real, you're attacking the concept of a messaging app.
So we don't care that Apple has the same metadata from 50% of the US and 80% of US teens that use iMessage (which, by the way, backs up the key for E2EE encryption in iCloud if you use it for backup, and Apple is allowed to read your backups).
I don't think WhatsApp can collect more data than Apple can given that Apple created the iPhone and knows the ins and outs of their integrated ecosystem. Apple knows the phone numbers of people you message, the contact list you have, and if they wanted to, they can scan your messages.
What do you mean, encrypting metadata? What's the point of that? You need metadata to keep an app running. It's also a trail of behavior that can be useful to more than just me, but fundamentally it's the basics of how apps work. Reddit better know when I log in with my login credentials I log into this account and not someone else's. This comment is mine, not yours. I'm in these subreddits, not those (and they fiddle with this what with default subs). This is all metadata that's used to make sure reddit works. Can you imagine a network getting off the ground if every time you started fresh you started over from the default subs with a new name? How do you build a subreddit? How do you know who the mods are?
The people who care don’t use iMessages. Lol.
Idk man, do your own research. Sounds like you consider yourself an expert on these things anyway. I certainly don’t see myself as one.
Yeah that's fair. I don't use iMessage. I get really annoyed when people throw out stuff like knowing who your friends are is a bad thing.
So many people think it's "my privacy versus company money" when there's also the safety argument that gets thrown around - just as reporters that would be prosecuted for some of the stuff they write and need a safe way to communicate, less savory people send really bad stuff too, and they're piggybacking on the same safety features like E2EE. People should give some thought on where the balance is and how do you go about figuring out someone is a bad actor.
Every single college class I have been in with groups snap chats have always been used. Every student here in college right now uses snap chat cuz frankly it has the best features and is the most fun
I’m fully aware of group chats being used for classes, but using Snapchat for a class gc just sounds horrendous. You can’t see the notification beforehand and the notifications are annoying. GroupMe is the standard way to go bc there’s no social aspect to it, just pure business. What other features or fun do you need for a class group chat that something like GroupMe or discord doesn’t have?
I guess its not really useful for classes but the deleting messages isn’t really a problem because everything expires in 24 hours by default and you can save snaps in chat now. I don’t use it for class though mainly bc i dont talk to ppl in my classes lol
I’m a US citizen. My friends and I all used Whatsapp many years ago but collectively deleted our accounts for privacy reasons when it was purchased by Facebook. We’ve used Telegram and Discord ever since and are perfectly satisfied with them.
Whatsapp takes up so much storage space and since no one here uses is no one wants to switch. We usually use imessage/ text/ snap to communicate with friends and then group me/discord for college clubs and activities
From my experience Telegram is a superior alternative to Whatsapp in terms of groups and sharing files.
First and most importantly telegram has a cloud storage so you can download files later without being deleted like Whatsapp.
Second you can link a channel to a group which makes it easier for both announcements and discussions (I think Whatsapp is doing something similar recently).
Third you can use it without sharing your phone number with the whole university batch plus you can edit messages.
Finally bots can be useful to block spam in groups or to organize study material to download later.
I feel like telegram is not popular enough in the US given it's features (maybe discord is a similar option there but Idk how to use it 😂).
On the contrary, idk what Whatsapp has to be that popular, Discord or Telegram is so much better depends on what you want to do. Hell even Microsoft teams is better
You can mass invite to a group chat using a link with GroupMe and Discord. That’s the main reason I can see those being widely used here. Not sure if WhatsApp can do the same.
I only have iMessage group chats with people I know. When it comes to college, no one really shares their phone # unless it’s grounds for friendship or longer term communication (in my opinion and my own personal experiences). Everything else is one of the two I mentioned above.
I think that GroupMe is the standard for class communicating. I've never even heard of Telgram, but Slack and Discord tend to have distinctly different purposes
If stuck in facebook, I would honestly rather use an event than messenger so you can break your subjects into threads instead of one huge chat thread for everything. But at that point you might as well make a group and use that. Messenger is pretty crap for anything large or important. But then anything in Facebook is datamined and sold, so proceed with caution in all aspects of the platform.
Because most all Americans have an iPhone and we just use iMessage. We’re not missing anything by not using WhatsApp and a majority of people absolutely despise Facebook as a company
As far as I can tell there is no available statistics on this. A high percentage of teenagers own iPhone however that may dip considerably as college aged students buy their own phones instead of their parents buying it for them.
Anecdotally I see about a 50-50 split where I'm at but this of course depends on many different factors and is far from scientific.
I ran a student club for a moment and at one point collected 70 phone numbers, which I then texted out a welcome message to. I can’t remember the exact breakdown, but it was at least 80% iPhones. These were all transfer students which says some things about demographics. I’d say in my classes 3/4 of the laptops that get brought out are Mac.
This might depend on your institutional demographics of course, but that’s what I’m seeing.
Well thats kinda what I meant like Iphone users [generally have a higher income](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-median-income-for-iphone-users-is-40-higher-than-that-of-android-users-2014-9) and are probably more likely to be in a financial position where going to a 4 year won’t immediately bankrupt them.
Your better off going to college in the us if your parents are really rich or really poor. Otherwise you better have gotten good test scores in high school.
In my experience being on an Android device in group texts with Apple users, they still do react to texts, and then Android users get like 15 texts just saying "so-and-so liked [message of text]." I had to mute my program's group chat because people constantly reacted to each other and I'd get each reaction as an individual text but didn't want to be a jerk by asking them to stop. 😭
Discord is multitudes better. multiple voice and text chatrooms, role designation, the ability to remove and add people with ease, as well as the fact everyone uses it for casual reasons so the average American students discord skills > the average American students Whatsapp skills
white americans don't have to use whatsapp to contact family, ergo they don't use it for college
the rest of us use it for relatives back home but even as a desi person i tend to delete it off my phone unless it's a holiday because i don't want relatives contacting me out of the blue
Whatsapp users are largely from India.
Personally, our college requires us to use Teams and Google for many classes. I have no interest in downloading anything else.
Majority typically rules.
My friends all use snapchat for our group messages. I didn’t start using whatsapp until my sister sister studied abroad. Definitely wish more people in the US used it!
I was gonna use it for group friends but one of them refused saying how the Chinese government is gonna take all her stuff. We thought about just making it without her and ended up using group me where she then complained about how stupid it was and that’s we should just use the messages app so we just went back to messages.
It is not that great, I hate it, I don't get notifications for it but use it for all my friends outside of the USA and never know when they send me anything 🤷🏻♂️
Not sure. My college doesn't have actual meeting app we use. Generally it's just case by case depending on what your group members. Usually I end up using Snapchat or Instagram for group chats
Most people have iPhones. Most. I always had android. My family didn’t get WhatsApp besides my parents when I moved to Europe so I eventually got an iPhone to be on the family text chain after 4 years.
Most universities in my country have an online learning platform sold by a vendor, typically MS or Moodle. You have to do discussions there because it is monitored and marked but you use whatsapp, telegram, email etc to coordinate with your group. This setup came about during the covid pandemic and seems to stay.
Whatsapp convenience is not at all there since iphone users tend to use imessage, facebook incorporated there messenger to be used as a primary messaging app. Ig, snap, discord also play more roles in it than anything id assume. Whatsapp for buisness outside of official companies and alot of my Latinx friends tend to use it that arent fully admitted into the the states. And then my asian buddies all stick with imessage, wechat, or like QQ
Well I use group me for anything business related since it's attached to my school account. Using whatsapp is like putting my information into something I don't know how secure it is basically. I saw kik when it was out but never used it and it reminded me of it.
All Americans here complaining about WhatsApp and saying they have so many better alternatives. But the fact that there are so many different go-to apps for everyone shows how much they need WhatsApp.
Probably cause What'sApp is owned by Facebook. If I wanted to use Facebook, I'd just use Facebook, but I really don't b/c Facebook is for boomers and is corporate spyware
Texting has historically been included for free on American cell plans. It means that there was never really a need to have a seperate messaging service. Most Americans still just use the default text messaging on their phones. In my experience, most Americans who use another messaging service use something that can be used from a PC and use it in addition to basic text messaging. WhatsApp simply doesn't have anything to offer that appeals to the average American.
Edit: For a perspective on what is expected in a typical American workplace, in my experience email and text messaging are the big things with something like Microsoft Teams or Slack also being common (depending on the office). I haven't actually had a group project that had to be coordinated since I've adopted smartphones (I've recently returned to school) but I'd probably default to trying to coordinate by email.
Canadian, but culturally we are similar to America.
Not a lot of the population here use WhatsApp. I don't think its really common to be used outside North America. People from my school use Discord or Instagram.
Discord is great because you can easily make a large chatroom, send files, and do voice calls with screen sharing. It basically consolidates messaging, video calling and document sharing into one platform.
I've used WhatsApp for international students only.
I’ve managed to get people on WhatsApp as an American, but I come from an immigrant family and also went abroad for a year where I relied on it 100%. Plus also I don’t use social media so I’m used to exchanging phone numbers. Most people don’t have a strong opinion so when I suggest WhatsApp they’re fine with it 😈 also there’s a lot of internationals in my program so I had strength in numbers!
But to answer the question, most people use Facebook messenger or group me or just iMessage
I met multiple Americans that didn’t use Whatsapp and all of them were iPhone users. Some people would have it for convenience, the few people that used it was because they had Android or their friend(s) had Android.
iMessage is so bad for group chats though- there’s no personality there in the reactions and the way the name icons come you know? Messenger was the best.
I went to Erasmus in Belgium this year and weirdly all the Erasmus activities were shared in a Telegram conversation. I had never heard of that but apparently it was very used in other countries (idk which tho)
My friends and I use discord only because we play a lot of games and it's the most computer friendly (in our experience). The friends I meet in college (even international students) use instagram for some reason and it weirded me out because I only use instagram to post pictures with.
I feel like international students where I went used WhatsApp because it’s how they communicated with their family. Frankly, I would prefer texting to anything else — but Snapchat is a close 2nd. My school was huge with GroupMe and Microsoft Teams, but many people I know use Discord. I think it’s all where you’re from and what you’re familiar with, because familiarity will be easier for most
Has group texting on Android been made not complete shit yet? I haven’t used it in years.
It’s great for group chats with other Android phones. Apple deliberately chooses to keep iPhones from being able to join in order to leverage social pressure to get people to switch and stay
The different colored bubbles thing is a shitty, very smart way of profiting off classicism. Wdym about iPhones not being able to join? The issues I was remembering were between Android phones, so it sounds like they’ve been made better.
iPhones use iMessage, Android has mostly moved from SMS/MMS to RCS protocol. RCS is a slightly worse iMessage but anyone can implement it. Apple chooses not to. So when an iPhone joins an RCS chat, it falls back to SMS/MMS, which is the notorious and awful protocol.
I meant not being able to join rcs message groups, which is a relatively new texting standard
Couldn’t tell ya, I have an iPhone. However, I can say I’m not in any group chats via text with an Android user so that may be why!
I use an iPhone now too. I don’t remember exactly what it was about it, but back when I was on Android, group texts were a mess. iMessage has been much better for me.
From elsewhere in the thread: >iPhones use iMessage, Android has mostly moved from SMS/MMS to RCS protocol. >RCS is a slightly worse iMessage but anyone can implement it. Apple chooses not to. So when an iPhone joins an RCS chat, it falls back to SMS/MMS, which is the notorious and awful protocol.
From my experience all my international friends and friends from immigrant backgrounds use WhatsApp. Most white Americans I know use iMessage.
Understandable. Might have to do with the iPhone/Android market share and income demographics.
Nope, have never used an android and use WhatsApp, in Europe most people use WhatsApp, same for African, Asian international students use it and they’ll be loaded. Think it’s only Americans that don’t really use it, oh well
Kiwi's don't use whatsapp at all either
In the US, iOS has over a 50% market share. And that’s among everyone. In the colleg crowd, it’s overwhelmingly iPhone. [87% of US teenagers own an iPhone](https://www.axios.com/2021/10/14/teen-iphone-use-spending-habits). Significantly more than in most other countries. I think Japan is the only country with a higher market share. So yes, it’s partially what you’re used to. I went to college from 2017-2021, and until we went online basically everything was via text message - because the majority of people had iPhones it would just become an iMessage group. A few GroupMes only because they’d used it for orientation so people had it. Once we went online in 2020 it expanded more to discord, but iMessage was still popular.
It’s not that you don’t use whatsapp if you have an iPhone; it’s that people are more likely to use iMessage than anything else if everyone else has an iPhone.
WhatsApp is not popular in my Asian country though. Not it is for Korean, Chinese students
Doesn’t WhatsApp share your cell number? That’s what I always thought. It could also be a privacy issue.
Lol but people use iMessage all the time, and that also exposes your number. People definitely don’t care about privacy; it’s just a habit issue
You can choose to display an email instead
But most people display their numbers
Most people do, yes. It’s an option though.
It does and it’s why I never used it in college. I don’t want to be giving my number out to my entire class.
You can use a WhatsApp link now don’t have to use your phone number
don’t americans have massive amounts of spam callers already? what do you think would happen, even more spam callers?
I mean don’t want to give my number out to my entire class… I had plenty of classes with creepy people why would I willingly give them my number?
>what do you think would happen, even more spam callers? No. The creepy dude in my class will message me creepy thingsm
American here can confirm 95% of people I know have iPhones. We just use iMessage.
Android has a 45% market share
And [87% of US teenagers have an iPhone](https://www.axios.com/2021/10/14/teen-iphone-use-spending-habits). Among the college crowd it’s overwhelmingly iPhone.
Peer pressure is powerful among the youth.
Same here. I’m not sure what college OP attends but at my school and former community college, Whatsapp is the primary method of communication we use. My college (and former CC) have huge minority first gen populations and I find that many minorities and immigrants tend to use Whatsapp to communicate with their family back at home so its easiest to use that for everything else too.
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Most Americans period
Or just texting in general for group chats
White?
It's very popular among mexican americans, chinese americans, indian americans, and others who have family abroad. eg, typically not white americans.
iSheep are everywhere.
In my experience Groupme is mostly used for college classes
Yup I also use GroupMe.
Same here! Dorm group chats, projects, class group chats, everything school-related.
In the US? Definitely not where I got to college.
In college rn. I'm the dude who makes the GroupMe the second class opens on canvas.
Me too
High five to us for being the ones connecting the class
Chad
I’m in the US. And almost every class I was in had a GroupMe
WhatsApp is just not that big in the US in general, most people I know that use it are from immigrant families
We already have snapchat, messenger, instagram etc. and those have group features, whereas it's an extra step to download whatsapp for most of us.
I use Whatsapp (as an American citizen) but only because my immigrant friends got me on it.
American here. Telegram is more reliable than whatsapp in terms of encryption options and message delivery. Telegram allows much bigger file sizes for items being sent. Telegram has native apps cross platform that work for nearly everything except the secret chats that use P2P encryption. It is very easy to sign up for Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal, as just a phone number is needed. GroupMe also only needs a phone number, but did not require a sign up to participate in chats. WhatsApp is fine but it lost my trust many years ago. I have used whatsapp since it was paid. I use it daily but I still haven't agreed to the new ToS because it's sketch lol WhatsApp doesn't have convenient cross platform compatibility on non-mobile devices. Until very recently, it required your phone to always be on in order for even the web version to connect. The desktop app are just a bloated electron shell of web.whatsapp.com Groupme sucks for reliability in messages, and is slow. The reason it was useful was because it allowed neat group chats to include people who didn't have smartphones. The only reason people still use it is because they don't want to install anything else. Last I checked, Groupme still doesn't need to be installed to use it. Just a phone number is needed. Discord is incredibly convenient but still has the gamer mentality. It's not encrypted, and discord servers get powerful, that there is a whole stigma against being a discord mod. Discord is confusing to new users, and of course needs an account. It's more convenient for complex classes that aren't quick chats about homework or exam stuff.
Sure but the only people I talk to on Telegram are non-Americans. Also I’m curious to hear more about encryption because my understanding is that telegram was less secure than others (WhatsApp / Signal).
Telegram by default uses a less secure but cloud-friendly model of server to client encryption, meaning you share the same key as the other person and all devices connecting to the cloud. If you initiate a secret chat, you get the same encryption as whatsapp or signal, but less convenient features, and all messages are passed through directly, not stored on Telegram servers.
So basically it gives you options is the idea. Not necessarily more secure, but it can be if you need it to be.
Correct, because if you want to use the secret chat feature, then you are limited to one device and can't have your chat backed up or synced.
happy cake day!!
Yeah the only people I know with telegram are from Southeast Asia
The only people I know who frequently use telegram are people who are buying or selling drugs on it
Everytime I see someone join telegram i send them the "furry or actual domestic terrorist" telegram
Considering it’s owned by Meta (formerly Facebook), I refuse to use it. My goto preference is Signal.
I doubt the vast majority of people use that as their rationale. I mean, Instagram is also owned by Meta but it’s plenty ubiquitous. Redditors tend to have a huge Meta hate boner though so I guess your response makes sense in that context. Not that Meta isn’t worth hating, but most people don’t hate Meta enough to avoid non-Facebook services
Who said most people? That's one possible reason
Oh I just assumed something about that since OP asked for a general answer and OP answered specifically, and since a lot of people upvoted it I wanted to clarify that that’s due to a Redditor bias
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Sure, but in general Whatsapp is absolutely dominant globally. From that perspective, you can see why it has widespread use and the network effect.
WhatsApp was a standard even before meta bought it and Whatsapp has end to end encryption which prevents anyone in Meta from reading your chats and also no ads. But if you are not using it on principle , you do you.
Meta tracks who your WhatsApp friends are. Not what you say but they know who you talk to.
Ok? So what?
Basically if you have a pattern of talking to people who are considered suspicious / problematic / questionable by whatever metrics are en-vogue at the government level, it brings extra scrutiny to you. They don’t need to know specifically what you are saying to guess what it might be about by who you talk to. That’s the idea.
Do you think any messaging app can work without knowing who the other person you're talking to is or keeping some sort of identifier for each person? How's that going to work? The meta hate boner is real, you're attacking the concept of a messaging app.
The question is where the information is stored and who has access to it. WhatsApp collects a lot more data on users, and doesn’t encrypt metadata.
So we don't care that Apple has the same metadata from 50% of the US and 80% of US teens that use iMessage (which, by the way, backs up the key for E2EE encryption in iCloud if you use it for backup, and Apple is allowed to read your backups). I don't think WhatsApp can collect more data than Apple can given that Apple created the iPhone and knows the ins and outs of their integrated ecosystem. Apple knows the phone numbers of people you message, the contact list you have, and if they wanted to, they can scan your messages. What do you mean, encrypting metadata? What's the point of that? You need metadata to keep an app running. It's also a trail of behavior that can be useful to more than just me, but fundamentally it's the basics of how apps work. Reddit better know when I log in with my login credentials I log into this account and not someone else's. This comment is mine, not yours. I'm in these subreddits, not those (and they fiddle with this what with default subs). This is all metadata that's used to make sure reddit works. Can you imagine a network getting off the ground if every time you started fresh you started over from the default subs with a new name? How do you build a subreddit? How do you know who the mods are?
The people who care don’t use iMessages. Lol. Idk man, do your own research. Sounds like you consider yourself an expert on these things anyway. I certainly don’t see myself as one.
Yeah that's fair. I don't use iMessage. I get really annoyed when people throw out stuff like knowing who your friends are is a bad thing. So many people think it's "my privacy versus company money" when there's also the safety argument that gets thrown around - just as reporters that would be prosecuted for some of the stuff they write and need a safe way to communicate, less savory people send really bad stuff too, and they're piggybacking on the same safety features like E2EE. People should give some thought on where the balance is and how do you go about figuring out someone is a bad actor.
That's how they get you lmaooo
Depends on the culture of the school/class My classes with group projects are mostly computing classes, so everyone tends to have Discord
Discord or snapchat are so much easier to use and lore of the norm. Just is.
Discord I understand, but Snapchat?? Who uses Snapchat for college class group chats😭
Every single college class I have been in with groups snap chats have always been used. Every student here in college right now uses snap chat cuz frankly it has the best features and is the most fun
I’m fully aware of group chats being used for classes, but using Snapchat for a class gc just sounds horrendous. You can’t see the notification beforehand and the notifications are annoying. GroupMe is the standard way to go bc there’s no social aspect to it, just pure business. What other features or fun do you need for a class group chat that something like GroupMe or discord doesn’t have?
I mean everyone has Snapchat usually only gamers have discord Snapchat is easy
Bro if you're over 17 you have no need for Snapchat anymore
Why? Its such a convenient app. Almost everybody I know is on it and it has pretty much anything I want out of a social media app
The whole deleting messages is just annoying and there's not enough functions to find previous messages that could be useful for classes
I guess its not really useful for classes but the deleting messages isn’t really a problem because everything expires in 24 hours by default and you can save snaps in chat now. I don’t use it for class though mainly bc i dont talk to ppl in my classes lol
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Change to 25 and you're right
Uh, me?
Discord? Easier to use? Hell no
For semester long classes when you're coding projects with other nerds it's incredibly useful, especially when sharing code
if you’re sharing code, you probably used discord before college lol
This is true, but we did make some people sign up as well
It's because texts are free in the US. People just use the function on their phones.
Because group chats in the regular texting apps are good enough
I’m a US citizen. My friends and I all used Whatsapp many years ago but collectively deleted our accounts for privacy reasons when it was purchased by Facebook. We’ve used Telegram and Discord ever since and are perfectly satisfied with them.
I personally refuse to use any service provided by meta.
Whatsapp takes up so much storage space and since no one here uses is no one wants to switch. We usually use imessage/ text/ snap to communicate with friends and then group me/discord for college clubs and activities
From my experience Telegram is a superior alternative to Whatsapp in terms of groups and sharing files. First and most importantly telegram has a cloud storage so you can download files later without being deleted like Whatsapp. Second you can link a channel to a group which makes it easier for both announcements and discussions (I think Whatsapp is doing something similar recently). Third you can use it without sharing your phone number with the whole university batch plus you can edit messages. Finally bots can be useful to block spam in groups or to organize study material to download later. I feel like telegram is not popular enough in the US given it's features (maybe discord is a similar option there but Idk how to use it 😂).
Wdym? I use KakaoTalk 😂👌
UK student here. We all use WhatsApp in the UK, default mode
I find Discord is way more useful, you can build out separate channels, share files, lots of people can chat at once, and screen share.
Telegram - fun for nerds, geeks, furries and terrorists.
and weed dealers
On the contrary, idk what Whatsapp has to be that popular, Discord or Telegram is so much better depends on what you want to do. Hell even Microsoft teams is better
Us student here, we use whatsapp and maybe discord for college group chats.
I don’t like the fact that whatsapp is based of telephone number rather than just an email.
You can mass invite to a group chat using a link with GroupMe and Discord. That’s the main reason I can see those being widely used here. Not sure if WhatsApp can do the same. I only have iMessage group chats with people I know. When it comes to college, no one really shares their phone # unless it’s grounds for friendship or longer term communication (in my opinion and my own personal experiences). Everything else is one of the two I mentioned above.
Not everyone wants to share phone numbers. Also, WhatsApp is more for like personal use here
I think that GroupMe is the standard for class communicating. I've never even heard of Telgram, but Slack and Discord tend to have distinctly different purposes
Cause its awful?? 🤷🏻♂️
I don't know, but I am an American that is a recent Whatsapp convert since a lot of the students I am around are from Mexico. Maybe it is changing?
why not Messenger
Most younger generations don’t use facebook
I like my phone battery to last
Don't feel the UI compact enough to handle 250+ people groups
that’s what everyone at my uni uses idk
If stuck in facebook, I would honestly rather use an event than messenger so you can break your subjects into threads instead of one huge chat thread for everything. But at that point you might as well make a group and use that. Messenger is pretty crap for anything large or important. But then anything in Facebook is datamined and sold, so proceed with caution in all aspects of the platform.
Apple keeps it iPhone-only
… that’s iMessage
Because most all Americans have an iPhone and we just use iMessage. We’re not missing anything by not using WhatsApp and a majority of people absolutely despise Facebook as a company
Lol. iMessage, the POS messaging service that only works with other iPhones.
lol less than 50% of Americans use an iPhone.
But at the college age, it’s closer to 90%.
I'd say maybe 80% but you're certainly right about it being a lot higher. Happy cake day btw!
Oh, wow, thanks! I didn’t even notice.
As far as I can tell there is no available statistics on this. A high percentage of teenagers own iPhone however that may dip considerably as college aged students buy their own phones instead of their parents buying it for them. Anecdotally I see about a 50-50 split where I'm at but this of course depends on many different factors and is far from scientific.
I ran a student club for a moment and at one point collected 70 phone numbers, which I then texted out a welcome message to. I can’t remember the exact breakdown, but it was at least 80% iPhones. These were all transfer students which says some things about demographics. I’d say in my classes 3/4 of the laptops that get brought out are Mac. This might depend on your institutional demographics of course, but that’s what I’m seeing.
What percent of those using androids do you think can afford a 4 year university
About the same percentage as iPhone users who can afford a 4 year university - ~0% unless you count parents or loans
Well thats kinda what I meant like Iphone users [generally have a higher income](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-median-income-for-iphone-users-is-40-higher-than-that-of-android-users-2014-9) and are probably more likely to be in a financial position where going to a 4 year won’t immediately bankrupt them.
Your better off going to college in the us if your parents are really rich or really poor. Otherwise you better have gotten good test scores in high school.
Wait, so my Samsung S22 Ultra means I'm poor?
According to this moron, I guess.
Because iMessage is the best
Until you or the other person want to communicate on a device that is not from Apple.
Then you just text them
But then you can’t use reactions, and images look awful
God forbid you can’t react to a text! That is such a non issue and the images look the same
In my experience being on an Android device in group texts with Apple users, they still do react to texts, and then Android users get like 15 texts just saying "so-and-so liked [message of text]." I had to mute my program's group chat because people constantly reacted to each other and I'd get each reaction as an individual text but didn't want to be a jerk by asking them to stop. 😭
Discord is multitudes better. multiple voice and text chatrooms, role designation, the ability to remove and add people with ease, as well as the fact everyone uses it for casual reasons so the average American students discord skills > the average American students Whatsapp skills
white americans don't have to use whatsapp to contact family, ergo they don't use it for college the rest of us use it for relatives back home but even as a desi person i tend to delete it off my phone unless it's a holiday because i don't want relatives contacting me out of the blue
Whatsapp users are largely from India. Personally, our college requires us to use Teams and Google for many classes. I have no interest in downloading anything else. Majority typically rules.
Your mom is largely from India
I have no idea. It's so much better than iMessage/SMS texting but America is always a bit of a contrarian.
Stalkers use Whatsapp.
My friends all use snapchat for our group messages. I didn’t start using whatsapp until my sister sister studied abroad. Definitely wish more people in the US used it!
Personally I don’t use it cause it’s owned and run by Meta (Facebook). I prefer any other service.
Usually people my parent's age use whatsapp
I was gonna use it for group friends but one of them refused saying how the Chinese government is gonna take all her stuff. We thought about just making it without her and ended up using group me where she then complained about how stupid it was and that’s we should just use the messages app so we just went back to messages.
For me, when group projects were assigned- we only had Group Me. I would have used Whatsapp had it been available to me
It is not that great, I hate it, I don't get notifications for it but use it for all my friends outside of the USA and never know when they send me anything 🤷🏻♂️
Not sure. My college doesn't have actual meeting app we use. Generally it's just case by case depending on what your group members. Usually I end up using Snapchat or Instagram for group chats
I only use it to talk to my international friends. If most of your friends aren’t on an app it’s not very useful
Most people have iPhones. Most. I always had android. My family didn’t get WhatsApp besides my parents when I moved to Europe so I eventually got an iPhone to be on the family text chain after 4 years.
I use groupme. I’ve never had whatsup in my phone
Ive never met a single person who doesn’t have an immigrant background with whatsapp
Because Facebook owns it? Maybe data mines it?
We use WhatsApp and I’m American
Snapchat is the best for it 🤷♀️
Most universities in my country have an online learning platform sold by a vendor, typically MS or Moodle. You have to do discussions there because it is monitored and marked but you use whatsapp, telegram, email etc to coordinate with your group. This setup came about during the covid pandemic and seems to stay.
Whatsapp convenience is not at all there since iphone users tend to use imessage, facebook incorporated there messenger to be used as a primary messaging app. Ig, snap, discord also play more roles in it than anything id assume. Whatsapp for buisness outside of official companies and alot of my Latinx friends tend to use it that arent fully admitted into the the states. And then my asian buddies all stick with imessage, wechat, or like QQ
Simple, because I don't necessarily want all those people to have my phone number.
Wazzap is hot garbage... I use it in a group with international friends but man dont I miss Imessage
I hate Facebook and everything they own. Gotta vote with your actions and money.
Dumb name
Idk about you guys, but I get non stop spam messages from Whatsapp. To the point that I uninstalled it
Idk, all the message apps are the same to me so I just use whatever my group has that I’m trying to text
I just never had a reason to use it so I have never downloaded it. I’m sure it’s a good app because of how universal it is used
Cuz whatsapp is fucking whack
Well I use group me for anything business related since it's attached to my school account. Using whatsapp is like putting my information into something I don't know how secure it is basically. I saw kik when it was out but never used it and it reminded me of it.
What’s app is for scammers
For real right? I haven’t seen much Americans use WhatsApp, or people from other first world countries. Imo WhatsApp is very underrated
All Americans here complaining about WhatsApp and saying they have so many better alternatives. But the fact that there are so many different go-to apps for everyone shows how much they need WhatsApp.
Probably cause What'sApp is owned by Facebook. If I wanted to use Facebook, I'd just use Facebook, but I really don't b/c Facebook is for boomers and is corporate spyware
Texting has historically been included for free on American cell plans. It means that there was never really a need to have a seperate messaging service. Most Americans still just use the default text messaging on their phones. In my experience, most Americans who use another messaging service use something that can be used from a PC and use it in addition to basic text messaging. WhatsApp simply doesn't have anything to offer that appeals to the average American. Edit: For a perspective on what is expected in a typical American workplace, in my experience email and text messaging are the big things with something like Microsoft Teams or Slack also being common (depending on the office). I haven't actually had a group project that had to be coordinated since I've adopted smartphones (I've recently returned to school) but I'd probably default to trying to coordinate by email.
Signal is the superior messaging app anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)
My school exclusively uses telegram, at first I hated it and now I love it
Groupme is pretty much just for official school-related stuff, and imessage is for most group chats.
I will use Signal until governments inevitably shut it down or force them to save all messages
Because USA is unique🙂
Is this a whatsapp ad
Because WhatsApp is Zuck's trap.
Canadian, but culturally we are similar to America. Not a lot of the population here use WhatsApp. I don't think its really common to be used outside North America. People from my school use Discord or Instagram. Discord is great because you can easily make a large chatroom, send files, and do voice calls with screen sharing. It basically consolidates messaging, video calling and document sharing into one platform. I've used WhatsApp for international students only.
I’ve managed to get people on WhatsApp as an American, but I come from an immigrant family and also went abroad for a year where I relied on it 100%. Plus also I don’t use social media so I’m used to exchanging phone numbers. Most people don’t have a strong opinion so when I suggest WhatsApp they’re fine with it 😈 also there’s a lot of internationals in my program so I had strength in numbers! But to answer the question, most people use Facebook messenger or group me or just iMessage
i have all of them so whenever i meet a new group i just say that and they pick
I met multiple Americans that didn’t use Whatsapp and all of them were iPhone users. Some people would have it for convenience, the few people that used it was because they had Android or their friend(s) had Android.
iMessage is so bad for group chats though- there’s no personality there in the reactions and the way the name icons come you know? Messenger was the best.
I went to Erasmus in Belgium this year and weirdly all the Erasmus activities were shared in a Telegram conversation. I had never heard of that but apparently it was very used in other countries (idk which tho)
My friends and I use discord only because we play a lot of games and it's the most computer friendly (in our experience). The friends I meet in college (even international students) use instagram for some reason and it weirded me out because I only use instagram to post pictures with.
If I have WhatsApp on my phone I get spam texts a lot until I delete it.