The Good: Group chats offer a constant connection with every variation of your group of friends. They serve as an easy way to plan the next get-together and to let all of your friends in on the latest gossip ASAP.  I’d venture to say that today, group chats are held most responsible for a majority of parties, hangouts, and being constantly informed of the latest scandal.

The Bad: The amount of data used and energy spent from group chats is enormous. If and when you finally decide to go to bed, you’ll risk waking up to 1,000 or more messages from a dozen different people about five completely unrelated topics. Gossip spreads like wildfire, and memes go stale quickly.

The Ugly: Drama is by far the greatest downside of the modern group chat. People become brave when the night wanes, and fights start breaking out. It becomes easy to shamelessly call other people out for no other reason aside from a lack of sleep. Group chats magnify the issue with multiple people feeding the fire from all different angles.

James Keller is a Copy Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.