I have two group chats going with my family.

One is functional — where and when is our weekly dinner? — and the other is just photos of Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

Really.

Why not? ( Double J: Paul Donoughue )

I asked friends, colleagues, experts and strangers about their group chats and got similar responses. Some had many, others had just one. All were a mixture of planning and LOLs.

A family group chat is an extension of real life.

It can be a spirited, loose, funny, exasperating place — sometimes all at once. It's a place for daily shout-outs, dank memes, dad jokes, expressions of love and expressions of hate (or something approaching it).

If you're lucky enough to be on speaking terms with your family, summer is generally when those relationships blossom IRL.

But if the family group chat has become a staple of contemporary culture — buttressed by the tech platforms we use daily — it's worth thinking about how they have changed or influenced the dynamic around the dinner table.

The chats that bring divorced parents together

It's no surprise writer Benjamin Law, whose first book was a memoir about his family, has quite a few group chats — one with just the five siblings, others with the addition of one or both parents, or partners.

"It's almost like every iteration of a wedding photo," he says.

There are idiosyncrasies to each chat. For example, things are a little more measured if both Law's parents are in the group — most of the time.

"My mum was being particularly brutal about my father, her ex-husband, once. I said to her 'Mum, you've put that in the wrong thread, Dad can see that. Would you mind deleting it?' Then there was a big discussion. 'Why should I delete it? I stand by my comment. He probably knows I think that about him'."

Facebook is de-emphasising its Newsfeed in favour of chat.

Giovanna Harvey and her husband Dan, who live on the Gold Coast, have three kids in their 20s.

Mrs Harvey, 54, has several chats going, including one with extended family who live around the world.

That one has "puns going backwards and forwards", she says, while family members poke fun at why and how Grandpa, who is 91, keeps copying and posting bits of past conversations.

While Mrs Harvey says the conversations with her immediate family can be superficial and don't replace phone calls, they do bolster her relationship with her three children.

"I really value that I hear from our kids all the time," she said.

Please don't call me, maybe

Facebook, hoping to keep people hooked on a brand dogged by scandal, is trying to reframe its platform around family and friends.

Also, chat.

"The future is private," Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year when unveiling a new design for Facebook. (Facebook has Messenger but also owns WhatsApp.)

Facebook now gives you the option to remove a post by tapping and holding on the message. ( Supplied: Facebook )

Meanwhile, our lives are becoming increasingly tech-assisted. The Atlantic recently called it the "Slack-ification" of the home: tools like Slack, Trello and Zoom, once confined to the office, are being brought home to help with the coordination of family life.

This will only amplify widely held concerns that we already spent too much time on our devices, avoiding real human connection.

Dr Joanne Orlando, a family and digital literacy expert, spends a lot of time speaking with Australian families.

While there is no research in this area yet, Dr Orlando says she has seen group chats grow in popularity in the past 12 months.

Often, they are created to serve a practical function, but they evolve to become a place to share viral videos or photos of the family pet — and, for some family members, to more easily express themselves.

"The people who are dominant in real life, in terms of conversations, are not necessarily dominant on chat," she says.

"And that's good."

Anne Hollonds, who is a psychologist and the director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies, says close relationships between parents and children in their 20s is a relatively new phenomenon — more common than a generation previous — and that technology is supporting that.

That won't resolve all problems within families, she says, and we cannot ignore the negative effects of technology, which has been linked in some studies to increased anxiety and depression in young people.

"But we do know that if communication channels remain open and adapt as kids grow up, then that's helpful in terms of providing support across the generations."

There's a related factor to all this: millennials don't like phone calls.

Time spent talking on a mobile phone fell for the first time in the UK last year. Only 75 per cent of smartphone users actually consider the phone function to be important.

"Most of the twenty- and thirtysomethings I socialise with would rather suck Donald Trump's toe than make or receive a call in order to have a chat," as the writer Daisy Buchanan put it in The Guardian.

Law, who is a co-host of the RN pop culture show Stop Everything!, agrees.

"I just feel like in 2019 to call someone without giving them a heads up is the height of rudeness," he said.

"The sub-text there is, 'I want to intrude on your time, and I am assuming that I am allowed to'." (Reader, I gave Benjamin a heads up before our phone interview.)

The family group chat, in sickness and in health

One friend in his early 30s wasn't sure why he hadn't yet been added to his girlfriend's family's group chat, despite her desire to have him there.

"I feel like getting added to your partner's one is basically the equivalent of marriage in 2019," he told me. (We spoke, naturally, on Messenger.)

He has a chat with just the five siblings, no parents. The most memorable conversation: a discussion about who was the favourite child.

"We landed on Vanessa," the youngest, "because she has given them a grandchild and also has no tattoos."

You've got mail. ( Reuters: Phil Noble )

Law says despite the proliferation of chat apps, more texting doesn't mean less intimacy.

Because his family is large and spread across different states and generations — his parents are boomers, his older siblings Gen X, he and his younger siblings millennials — the chat becomes an easy point of access for everyone.

"It makes sure that my family is a part of the daily rhythm of my life," he says.

"And what's more important than that?"