This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.
This is the second of a three-part series. Read the first part here.
It’s a warm September afternoon in Lagos and filming of the Nollywood slapstick comedy Osas and Nosa is delayed for the day. The scene being shot takes place in the driveway of a house in a gated compound, and the noise from construction next door is interfering with the tight schedule. As the director gets impatient and the production assistant scurries around handing out water bottles, Etinosa Idemudia, the film’s star, keeps working: She scrolls WhatsApp.
Along with her acting, press events, and efforts on other social media channels, the time Idemudia spends promoting her film on WhatsApp will arguably be one of her greatest contributions to its success.
WhatsApp is among Nigeria’s most popular social media platforms – used by 51 million people in the country – and it is by far the most influential.
For about a month, Idemudia has been posting several messages a day addressed to her 200,000 WhatsApp followers and promoting the film. She shares trailers, clips, and behind-the-scenes footage. When the film, which was shot for YouTube distribution, is released, Idemudia will leverage her intimate connection with fans to urge them to see it. Within two weeks, the film will have nearly 400,000 views – a big deal for a relatively small studio.
Idemudia launched her WhatsApp channel, Etinosa TV, in September 2023. When she’s not working on a movie, she posts on her channel, treating followers to slapstick videos, self-deprecating jokes poking fun at her appearance, and personal voice notes. Her tone is personal and familiar, seeming to erase the boundaries between the star and the fan. And unlike on platforms like Facebook or Instagram, Idemudia has full control of the communication. Her phone number is not revealed; her followers are anonymous; public reactions are restricted to emojis and comments are barred.
While Idemudia has been plagued with trolls on Instagram, on WhatsApp she has had no problems. “For me, WhatsApp is like a family place,” she told Rest of World. “This morning I woke up to see messages and just started crying like a baby,” she posted in October 2024, after picking up an award for Best Female Online Skit-maker at the Humour Awards, one of Africa’s biggest comedy events.
With over 2 billion users, WhatsApp is not just the most popular messaging app in the world – it’s a digital lifeline. Its closest competitors, WeChat (1.3 billion users) and Facebook Messenger (1 billion users), pale in comparison. In many parts of the world, WhatsApp is synonymous with the internet itself. For Nigerian content creators, Brazilian shopkeepers, and Indian aunties, it is often the only app they need. On WhatsApp, you can chat with friends and family, attend school, run a business, catch up on the news, shop, and even bank. Increasingly, it’s where people watch TV, book medical appointments, and arrange dates.
In Bangladesh, matchmaking is so popular on the platform that some have nicknamed it “Halal Hinge.” In India, WhatsApp has 400 million monthly active users; a 2022 study by the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford showed that more than half the population trusted WhatsApp as a news source. In Nigeria, WhatsApp TV broadcasts entertainment, cooking, and sports to people directly from their phones, most often by celebrities like Idemudia, but also from traditional news channels like GOtv Nigeria. In Saudi Arabia, a 2021 study analyzing the impact of WhatsApp on the blood donation process cited that 33% of participants found blood donors on the app. And in Indonesia — one of WhatsApp’s largest markets including India, Brazil, Mexico, and the U.S. — the platform has become essential for Muslim communities, hosting groups to organize daily morning prayers and coordinate communal Quran readings. Halimah Alaydrus, one of the country’s most influential social media clerics, speaks to 104,000 followers on her WhatsApp channel.
Globally, WhatsApp serves as a vital platform for diaspora communities, enabling them to stay connected with family and friends abroad, practice heritage languages, and share in festive celebrations. A 2023 study found that members of the Indian diaspora in the US prefer to discuss contentious issues like casteism, Hindu-Muslim relations, and anti-Asian hate crimes via the privacy of WhatsApp rather than other social media platforms.
Part of the app’s appeal is its intimate feel. Users enjoy a unique measure of control on WhatsApp: It is easy to block contacts, mute other users, exit groups, and hide one’s online status. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp doesn’t display ads in personal chats nor bombard users with targeted suggestions.
WhatsApp, originally developed as a lightweight tool for sending simple texts to friends, has by now become something infinitely bigger, more complicated, and more surprising. The app has been repurposed and remade by niche communities and for diverse cultural activities in ways that many in the West could never imagine – and in ways that its creators never expected.
In Florianópolis, a city in southern Brazil, Georgia Lopes, an employee at a brand representation company, has a vibrant social life that is in part conducted on various WhatsApp groups. She’s in a book club where members share reading recommendations, a gym group to coordinate workouts and class schedules, and a shoe marketplace where sellers post discounted items for direct purchase. Lopes also has a passion for animals, and she’s turned WhatsApp into an unexpected tool for enabling dog adoptions.
“I have two dogs,” she told Rest of World. “A shih tzu and a caramelo – a street dog.” Whenever she spots a stray wandering the streets of Florianópolis, she clicks on the app to alert the group.
Brazil is WhatsApp’s largest market outside of Asia, with over 56% of the country’s 212 million people using the app every month. “People use it for everything,” said João Victor Archegas, the coordinator for law and tech at Rio de Janeiro’s Institute of Technology and Society, which develops projects on AI regulation and tech policy. “Not using it is not an option.” If you’re not on WhatsApp, it’s as if you don’t have a phone at all.
WhatsApp’s cultural domination is, of course, by design. Soon after Meta acquired WhatsApp for $22 billion in 2014, it launched new features including payment integration, Communities, Channels, and business messaging. The app got bigger and expanded into every part of life.
In Indonesia, the national football team uses the Channels feature, a one-way broadcast of text, links, and images, to share match updates and exclusive behind-the-scenes content. Within a short time, they amassed 2.3 million followers, with each post flooded with hundreds of emojis from enthusiastic fans.
Globally, Channels became a platform for direct celebrity-audience engagement. On November 15, 2023, Latin superstar Shakira joined WhatsApp Channels ahead of her appearance at the Latin Grammys. Her nearly 16 million followers receive exclusive perks, such as sneak peeks of upcoming music videos, including one with Cardi B. A WhatsApp update on her tour alone garnered 33 million emoji reactions.
At a 2022 WhatsApp summit in São Paulo, Zuckerberg told his audience that his goal was “to make it so you can find, message, and buy from a business all in the same WhatsApp chat”. In that, he has been successful. But WhatsApp’s lasting influence, in Brazil and elsewhere, has gone further than its business uses. What’s most striking is how it has been reinvented by its users.
When in Honduras, Alicia Quiñones, the head of the Americas region at PEN International, almost exclusively uses WhatsApp to advocate for the protection of journalists to government officials. “I first avoided using WhatsApp, but I realided the only way to make an appointment with ministers in Honduras was through the app,” she told Rest of World. WhatsApp, she said, has become central to her work, allowing her to coordinate with colleagues in 20 different countries such as Cuba, Ecuador, and Argentina. According to Quiñones, WhatsApp is well suited to Latin America’s preferred communication style of long, conversational exchanges and debates. “Europeans are more likely to use email. They can’t understand our involvement with WhatsApp,” she said. “We are a very talkative society!”
WhatsApp has come to be defined by the organic, grassroots ingenuity of everyday people: creative workers, small business owners, couples, students, and teachers. Whatever Meta’s corporate agenda, WhatsApp’s everyday impact comes from the ordinary people using it to shape the culture.
In India, Meta has worked strategically to embed its product in people’s daily lives. WhatsApp has proved particularly successful in bridging the country’s rural-urban, rich-poor divide. Unlike other Meta platforms, such as Instagram, which tend to attract more socially mobile, urban populations, WhatsApp has few barriers to entry. It’s free to use and comes preloaded on multiple phones.
Along with the expected uses of entertainment and commerce, the app has found a more unexpected place in the culture. In a country where romantic relationships often require discretion, WhatsApp’s encrypted channels are an easy way to arrange clandestine meetings away from the eyes of curious family members.
Kamakshi Raheja, a self-described relationship coach, mends marriages over WhatsApp. “Yesterday, a woman messaged me late at night,” Raheja recalled from her Mumbai apartment. “She said, ‘Ma’am, I know it’s late,’ but despite the hour, I was able to guide her and her husband to sit down and talk things through. WhatsApp allows me to offer immediate intervention. It’s like first aid to save a marriage.”
In addition to her counseling services, Raheja helps her sister run a 5,000-member matchmaking service that they call Shadikerwado (“Get me married”). Clients often reach her on Instagram, share their contact, and then the conversation shifts to WhatsApp, Raheja told Rest of World. “Then we arrange a call or set up a group on WhatsApp where they can talk more.”
While traditional matchmakers meet their clients face-to-face and are typically hired by parents, Raheja has a more modern approach. She operates entirely online and charges couples directly for her services. She’s also more flexible. “Earlier, you met a couple of times, then got married. Now, people want to talk more, for a couple of months, and then they decide.”
The Raheja sisters request detailed profiles from their clients, including information such as religion, caste, income, skin tone, astrological sign, health status, and body type. For instance, a recent client described himself as a homeowner and car owner, identifying as “slim” and “fair,” and expressed a desire for a loyal partner who can cook. Interested individuals can indicate their interest by sending a heart emoji followed by a message to Raheja; direct contact is not permitted. To facilitate an introduction, interested parties are required to contact and pay the Raheja sisters for their services.
In Pakistan, where high gas prices, unreliable public transit, gridlocked traffic and toxic smog have made studying from home an increasingly practical option, WhatsApp has emerged as an online school. Sarah Tanveer, an economics teacher at Karachi’s Beaconhouse College, spends her weekdays teaching six classrooms of 150 A-level students. When she returns home at 5.30 p.m., she and her students switch to WhatsApp to discuss homework assignments. “These kids live fast-paced lives,” Tanveer said. “And they want everything fast, including answers to their questions!”
Tanveer also tutors students from other schools, sharing reading resources and recorded lectures. She notes that this method has proven especially beneficial for female students, as it eliminates the need for a chaperone to drop them off and pick them up from physical tutoring sessions.
A similar shift is taking place in Zimbabwe, where the app serves as a teaching tool in the most resource-deprived environments. From his two-room house in Mbare township in Harare, Maxwell Chimedza teaches 80 students — most between the ages of 16 and 18 years — entirely through WhatsApp. His virtual classroom covers history, sociology, family and religion, and English and Shona language study.
Chimedza, known on the app as Dr Maxx, transforms his Samsung Galaxy M32 phone into a teaching tool. He gives an 11-minute lesson on Shona mythology in which he discusses avenging spirits. “Avenging spirits are agents of social justice,” he explains, seamlessly switching between English and Shona. The ambient sounds of a rooster’s crow, a squealing dog, and children’s voices are audible in the background, but Chimedza and his students don’t mind.
Chimedza meets his students where they are – on their phones. Zimbabwe has high data costs, so his students rarely watch livestreams. They download his voice notes, videos, and screenshots to study offline. “I have students of all ages,” he told Rest of World. “Some are even in their 40s and 50s, but most come from poor backgrounds. Using a paid platform like Zoom would exclude many students. WhatsApp is accessible to everyone.”
Such is the promise of a cheap and easily available connection that spans the entire world. WhatsApp has taken the billions of separate connections between people that happen every day – teachers talking to students, entertainers talking to fans, neighbors gossiping, couples trying to find love – and moved these myriad conversations onto one all-encompassing platform. A one-stop shop for the entirety of human social existence, unencumbered by distance and difference.
As Chimedza said with a laugh: “My life is on WhatsApp, and WhatsApp is my life.”
Sonia Faleiro’s most recent book The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing was published in 2021.
This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.
