Your group chats are unread by design

Presence, not information

Group chats optimize for togetherness. Stickers, reactions, running jokes, seventeen messages deciding a restaurant. That is their charm and their curse. The information density is close to zero, but the three messages that actually need you are buried in the flood.

The digest pattern

Tell Macy to summarize a chat on a schedule, every evening for a family group, weekly for the college friends. She reads the flood, extracts what changed, what was decided, and what needs a reply from you, then sends a digest short enough to read at a red light. The Sunday dinner got decided, your aunt wants photos, nothing else needs you. Done in one text.

Reply without wading in

Half the friction of a busy chat is not reading it, it is answering it. Reply through Macy and she posts it to the chat for you. You stay present with the people without being present in the scroll.

Set it once

One sentence sets a digest: summarize the family chat every evening at seven. Change the cadence or drop it the same way. The chat stays warm. Your attention stays yours.