Also, if you ever walk through a university campus library or anywhere else where a bunch of students are studying on their laptops, I guarantee you that most students will have WhatsApp open in a browser or the actual desktop version of the app itself side by side next to their other tools/PDFs/papers.
I can not state how pervasive whatsapp is around here.
I’m not too surprised to be honest. WhatsApp is king in (western) Europe. I message all my friends, both Android and iPhone users, in WhatsApp because it’s just accepted as the de facto standard since everyone is on it. Phrases like “WhatsApp me” translated into various European languages are common here and synonymous with “send me an sms.” I’m part of a lab group at my university and WhatsApp is our main line of group communications, not Slack or email or whatever flavor of the month team chatting service is popular these days. I message my professor/boss as a primary contact point. He messages me to let me know he’s running late for a meeting and vice versa. WhatsApp is just literally everywhere here.
E: I just found an issue one of the locks in my apartment. I whatsapped the maintenance guy my landlord employs to request him to fix it and he messaged me back he’s gonna be here in a couple of hours.
More specifically the ones in that screenshot look like the versions you’d find on iOS/macOS. Just thought I’d mention it in case someone was viewing it with say an Android device it would look different [1].