To build on this, I think it may be an issue with the REST model specifically as opposed to SPAs themselves (which you may have been alluding to). It inherently encourages several small network requests. I'm not a huge GraphQL fanboy and I haven't worked with it closely, but it's a lot more conducive to batching data fetches into only a few requests. You can get around this by violating some REST assumptions like making heavy endpoints that return all of the data you know you'll need at the initial loading of an application, but then you open yourself up to criticism from pedants.