I'd still not class WhatsApp as a social media platform as your story implies. It is a communication tool for the most part with some social features slowly being baked in. The downsides you're speaking of are far more applicable to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and similar, more than WhatsApp, Telegram, or Discord.

I don't know where you're based, but in general these days at least one "chat app" of some kind is the de facto standard in most countries. For a lot of the world, that's WhatsApp.

The US is an outlier in still relying majorly on SMS as the communications platform.