Many of us today enjoy the benefits of communication technology, some of it at such low cost or even at no cost at all, thus becoming a game changer in cross-border communications.

The likes of WhatsApp, WeChat and Viber have made communication easy across national borders.

The boon of group chats is that we can communicate and convey messages to work or social groups.

However, the bane of this technology is that there is an overload of social communication, especially when one gets invited and added into a chat group without one's consent.

Many then tolerate the incessant chats and sharing of pictures and videos, but are reluctant to exit a group for fear of being branded as aloof or anti-social.

The sharing of videos and pictures may not be relevant to many people in such groups, but these videos and photos take up valuable megabytes on our devices and have to be routinely purged.

I urge people to seek consent before adding a friend into a chat group because the large number of chat groups can be exasperating, with unwanted videos and irrelevant pictures.

A lot of time then has to be spent on doing housekeeping on our devices.

Ramchand Tikamdas

Ramchandani