I live in Spain and I don't think you can't live without it.

Sure you will get a bit socially disconnected at times but that's about it.

Well you won't die if you don't have it, no. But all my friends, local businesses etc everything is on WhatsApp (and telegram for larger groups).

I'd really be an outcast if I didn't use it.

Local business still also work with phone.

I still have whatsapp but some of my contacts don't even care to check it anyway so they can take 2 weeks to see your messages. How useful is that?

In the end I only really keep it to communicate with my family abroad and my in law's extended family in another continent. My own progeniture as well as my partner have conversation/xmpp setup on their smartphone + a laptop. While I haven't done a whatsapp suicide yet, I told them it was important to have other means of communication in case their phone died, a cloud vendor had issue or their account was suddently banned.

I used to be in a group of parents when my kids were in primary school but it was mostly useless and full of intense mums arguing against each other. I barely looked at it. My dance class supposedly has a whatsapp group but I didn't join it and I heard only a few annoying persons post random memes in it. I went once there only to see nobody there and heard it was cancelled afterwards , no big deal. I'd rather do the trip once for nothing than be spammed all year long with stupid memes.

In Ireland, many child care providers use it as the only way to communicate, posting service updates, photos etc to WhatsApp groups.

Same goes for kids sports activities.

Counter point, I had no issues on my last visit to Spain.

No I meant if you live here, not if you just visit of course. If you're part of society here you really need it.