It is a better alternative to normal text messaging as it gives the user a wide variety of things to chose from and additional features. These include sending photos, videos, audio clips, recordings, documents (Ms Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF), Video calling among others.
The WhatsApp messaging application however comes with its own challenges. Not everyone loves forwarded messages and images downloaded straight into their phones. This is especially so when members of a group send or share numerous photos, videos, audio clips or documents and all these are "Automatically downloaded" into the phones internal storage and gallery. These could either be too much and unnecessary or inappropriate for viewing/explicit content for children.
The good news is that WhatsApp application has an amazing inbuilt data management mechanism that helps one to chose what to download and when. This can be easily done through the "WhatsApp Settings" option..
1. Open WhatsApp
2. Go to "Settings" (Three dots on the top right/Bottom)
3. Select "Data and Storage Usage"
4. Choose "Media Auto-download" (When using mobile data and when connected to Wi-Fi)
5. Uncheck all (photo, audio, video and documents) options for both Mobile data and Wi-Fi connectivity.
NB: This will not prevent you from accessing, downloading and viewing the content. It will help you to choose what to download and what not to download.
This way, you don't have to worry about being in groups and hurriedly exiting them to avoid too much data being used to download unnecessary things.
Recommendation: WhatsApp company should make the application in a way that the "default" data settings is set not to download anything regardless of whether one is using mobile data, Wi-Fi or roaming.
Jeremiah Oyongo MAUTI
+254 723 784 341
Jermauti@gmail.com
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