Zoe Williams: Neighbours united on WhatsApp during Covid. But then came the rows about teens

We had a lovely London lockdown until the disputes. About cats. And then teenagers... You know what? There's an upside to not having everyone’s number

A friend’s neighbourhood group disintegrated when some teens were observed smoking weed. Stock Picture

This time two years ago, as we settled into lockdown, the neighbourhood WhatsApp group came into its own. It often just spanned a couple of streets but the shock of the moment and the surge of civic spirit delivered at least one adult in any 40m radius, prepared to do the legwork of tracking down every phone number.

It would be stupid to the point of deliberate amnesia to pretend that it didn’t, at the time, seem like something genuinely beautiful was happening — solidarity, care, mutual aid, respectful watchfulness — a forest of collective responsibility springing up overnight, where previously there had only been the odd tendril of: “Do you have my parcel?” and “Did you hear that last night — do you think it was a fox or a murder?”