The Cult of iMessage

A cross-platform journey to uncover how iMessage came to rule America’s messaging hierarchy.

I. The Global Messaging Divide

We live in tribes (again).

At least that’s what it feels like. Every domain that once allowed for nuance, curiosity, or quiet disagreement has been swallowed by absolutism. Politics, media, medicine — even food — have become litmus tests. Are you pro-this or anti-that? Do you kneel, stand, boycott, hashtag? The stakes are always existential, the middle ground always betrayal or cowardice.

Once-harmless interests have become ideological battlegrounds. Sports fans bicker not just about stats, but also about morality. Parenting styles are now political identities. Even a dress couldn’t escape the culture wars: was it white and gold, or blue and black?

In the midst of all this, one issue remains surprisingly unexamined, possibly the most bitterly divisive of all: how do you text your friends?

For international students entering the American tech-social ecosystem, the answer isn’t obvious. And at HBS, it sneaks up on you slowly like all good cultural rites of passage.

It starts with an email you’ve been yearning for: “The MBA Admissions Board has made a decision on your application to Harvard Business School.”

Guys, cool it with the suspense. You log in. You scroll. And then, in a single line, your life tilts: “Congratulations — the answer is YES!”

Suddenly, you’re in. The messages flood in. Slack channels. WhatsApp groups. Invites from strangers who somehow already know or are headed to your hometown. Linking up with a complete stranger during a layover in Bangkok now feels like the most natural thing in the world, joined at the hip under the banner of Veritas. You’re looped in, tagged, welcomed, emoji-reacted into the HBS ecosystem.

You made it. Or so you think.

Because a few weeks in, something feels… off. Plans are happening. Dinners. Pick-up games. Weekend trips. But the invites don’t seem to land where they used to. Then, a few months in, someone casually asks you: “Do you have an American number?”

It’s not really a question. It’s a password into a secret society — and no, I’m not talking about Section X.

II. The Numbers Don’t Lie (But They Do Whisper)

Curious to know if I was alone in feeling this invisible divide, I decided to investigate the question that has haunted group chats across continents: iMessage or WhatsApp?

So I put together a short, anonymous survey to collect responses from brave HBS classmates willing to spill the tea on their messaging habits. These were (allegedly) smart, self-aware people — people who’d spent time in multiple countries, worked in consulting, journalism, and high fihhh-nanç. Aspiring Baker Scholars who crushed cold calls and (seemingly) had it all figured out.

In other words, people who should know better. Here’s what I found:

• 100% of respondents use iPhones. (Android? Never heard of her.)

• 100% use iMessage.

• 93% also use WhatsApp

• But when forced to choose just one app, 60% picked iMessage

• And perhaps most tellingly: 60% said they’d noticed a stigma against WhatsApp

In short, everyone uses WhatsApp. But iMessage is home.

Even within the divide, opinions ranged across the spectrum. One iMessage loyalist liked “the fun custom stickers of my cats that I made,” while a much more passionate advocate declared, “that blue hits like crack.” Sir, this is a Wendy’s.

A few outliers championed alternatives: Signal got a nod for its privacy features, while one Slack enthusiast, “willing to die on this hill,” praised its searchable history, thread replies, and the blessed freedom of not having to save people’s numbers.

This was starting to feel less like a product preference and more like a social operating system — something closer to language, fashion, or religion than tech. So I dug deeper.

III. iMessage: The Default That Feels Like Destiny

iMessage reigns supreme in the U.S., with ~80% of American teenagers owning an iPhone. It’s winning the messaging wars not because it’s the most powerful, but because it’s invisible — seamless, native, and inevitable.

It’s the app you didn’t choose but never left. It came preinstalled — and so did your loyalty.

Ask people why they prefer iMessage, and the answers get blurry fast:

• “It is native to my phone, so it feels like the most natural choice”

• “I’ve used it all my life”

• “WhatsApp is so sketchy”

These aren’t feature comparisons. They’re expressions of emotional muscle memory — the digital equivalent of your parents’ insistence on conducting every single banking transaction in person at your local branch despite your repeated pleas to teach them how to use the app.

Even iMessage’s limitations are framed as virtues. People praised its “easy contact adding,” and “group messages” — all things WhatsApp actually does better, but feels smoother on iMessage because it’s where you already live.

One respondent acknowledged this tension:

• “[WhatsApp’s] subgroups are awesome,” but… “iMessage feels way more intimate. WhatsApp reminds me of Facebook [—] where I can post in a big group and direct message folks [on] one platform. In theory, having the capability to do both is powerful, but Facebook is just so passé.”

Leave it to HBS students to “respectfully disagree.” Even the praise for WhatsApp came backhanded. Better the devil you know.

Still, there’s something to admire in how complete the illusion is. iMessage has managed to market absence — no profiles, no statuses, no stickers (unless you add them yourself) — as sophistication. The blue bubble is minimalist by design and maximalist in meaning.

Eugene Wei once described people as “status-seeking monkeys.” Seen through that lens, the medium, to quote Marshall McLuhan, is the message. In this hierarchy of social needs, functionality takes a back seat to signaling, which serves its own purpose entirely.

IV. WhatsApp: Functional, Global, and Still Judged

By almost every objective measure, WhatsApp is the superior messaging app. It offers subgroups, reactions, profile pictures, better photo quality, seamless syncing across platforms, and the holy grail of every overwhelmed HBS student: searchable history.

It’s used by over two billion people across the globe. But in the U.S.? It’s what you use when you have to “connect with Android ppl” (actual quote) or text your abuela in Mexico.

Despite being the backbone of communication in most of the world, WhatsApp is treated in America like a slightly embarrassing Plan B — something you use for “other people.” Functional, but vaguely off.

• “I hate WhatsApp. It’s overwhelming”

• “I didn’t really use WhatsApp until HBS…but it’s been pretty good”

• “WhatsApp is for sheep”

• “It’s literally such sketchy vibes and run by Meta - we hate that”

Clearly, WhatsApp isn’t just being judged on its features, but on its vibe. And in this newfound Vibe Economy, that’s the whole game.

V. The Stigma is Real

This might all sound like overthinking until you realize that 60% of respondents said they’ve noticed a stigma around using WhatsApp. It’s subtle, but it’s there.

One respondent put it plainly:

• “I’ve seen the stigma of not using iMessage. It’s why I got an iPhone.”

Another admitted that international students often get excluded from casual plans not out of malice, but out of habit:

• “iMessage users unintentionally exclude international folks from casual events and dinners because they default to organizing via iMessage, which many international folks can’t access.”

Forget about the green bubbles. This is about no bubble at all.

The irony is hard to ignore. At one of the most diverse and international institutions on the planet, many students experience social life through a domestically tribal interface. If you’re not on iMessage, you’re not in the group chat. And if you’re not in the group chat, you might never know there was a group chat.

Sometimes the exclusion isn’t even cross-cultural — just cross-platform:

• “WhatsApp ends up being a million groups that you don’t want to leave in fear of FOMO but spam your inbox.”

To be fair, there’s exclusion on both sides — just for different reasons. iMessage’s exclusivity runs on IYKYK energy; WhatsApp’s chaos is just the byproduct of trying to include everyone. Sometimes that volume overwhelms.

Case in point: eight months into the HBS experience, my classmate Ben Stanley — who had already appeared in multiple photos — suddenly joined the “Photos” subgroup and asked:

• “Is there any way I can see the chat history for this? I didn’t know this group existed lol”

Part of the issue is design philosophy. WhatsApp’s default is opt-out. Your status, your read receipts, your presence are always on unless you dig into your settings and turn them off. iMessage, by contrast, is opt-in. Read receipts are a choice, online presence is opaque, and everything about it signals restraint. Regardless, the message is clear: You should be grateful you’re on iMessage. It’s quieter here. Cleaner. Better.

And honestly? I see the appeal.

iMessage feels like a final attempt to cling to the slower, more intentional communication mediums of the past when you wrote a letter, sent it into the ether, and waited days, weeks, or even months for a response. There’s a certain peace in that.

WhatsApp, by contrast, is the hyperactive twin. Even though you can turn them off, the blue checkmarks, last seen timestamp, online status — they’re all just different faces of the same dopamine-driven culture that expects everything now.

It creates this weird emotional economy where “I was left on read” becomes a moral offense. People are busy, man. Let them get back to you when they can. Or want to.

VI. What Messaging Really Reveals

Messaging apps are, on the surface, just tools. But like all tools we use daily, they become mirrors, revealing how we think about identity, intimacy, and connection. They’re not just about how we relate, but who we think is worth connecting with and on what terms.

iMessage isn’t “better.” It’s just more familiar. And for some, familiarity is a powerful stand-in for loyalty. WhatsApp, meanwhile, is everything iMessage is not: global, cross-platform, open, chaotic, searchable. Despite its strengths, its vibe is slightly too international, too noisy, too available.

Maybe the real issue is that we’ve approached this as a binary — a false dichotomy. In truth, each platform serves different purposes. The best solution might be to lean in. Use each app for what it’s best at and switch fluidly between them. Not ideal, but that’s where we are.

There is, in theory, a fix, but it comes with just enough friction to keep it from catching on. As an international student, I kept my Mexican WhatsApp number while my actual cell phone is American. That means Americans have to add me twice, a burdensome extra step that, more often than not, is mostly avoided. Tools like Texts.com are trying to bridge the gap by consolidating multiple services into one inbox. I haven’t tried it, but the pitch makes intuitive sense.

And while we’ve spent all this time comparing platform features, maybe we haven’t gotten meta enough. As classmate Austin Ritz so eloquently put it, channeling his inner Ted Kaczynski: “iPhone, iMessage and all that comes with it are net negatives for society.”

This is the paradox of modern communication. We’ve never had more tools to connect across time zones, languages, and cultures, and yet, we are more isolated and lonelier than ever before.

But that, my friends, is a topic for another day.

Santiago Gil Gallardo (MBA '26) is originally from Mexico City. He graduated from Tecnológico de Monterrey with a degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering. Before HBS, he worked in venture capital at IGNIA and investment banking at a boutique firm in Mexico City.