Note: This is a companion piece to Caroline Betz’s article, here.
Today, it seems like everything, and everyone is clawing for my attention. My phone constantly buzzes with news from around the world, the latest posts on social media accounts that the algorithm is betting I’ll click on, and friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances wanting to get in contact with me.
Admittedly, I don’t make it harder for these notifications to constantly bombard me with their pinging, ringing and other attention-grabbing methods by putting my phone away when I don’t want to be bothered. Instead, I keep my phone buzzing in my pocket or within touching distance 24/7.
The problem is everyone is doing this. Everyone knows that everyone else has a phone inches away from their fingertips and that whatever they just messaged likely caused an alert on the other end.
This modern luxury is great when you need to get or share information fast, but what about when you don’t? What happens when people know there is a good chance you received or saw their message, but you don’t want or need to respond instantly? People start to take it personally.
Not receiving a message back or being “left on delivered” can be an anxiety-inducing event for many people, especially when it is with a potential romantic partner or at the beginning of a new relationship. Even worse is the dread of getting “left on read,” where you can see that someone has read your message but has still not responded.
It makes sense. Knowing that someone has read your message, or had the opportunity to, and elected not to respond, can make you question how close you are to that person and whether they truly value your relationship.
It seems that this anxiety on a small scale has caused the development of a new cultural norm: Whether friend, family, bestie or coworker, others expect you to respond to their message in a timely manner or else they may consider you insincere and not a true friend. This norm is disrespectful, emotionally unhealthy and feeds into the modern problem of technology addiction.
The expectation of quick responses can potentially harm people who receive notifications by making them feel like they need to drop everything to respond to a simple message when they might have other important things going on in their lives.
When someone sends a message and they believe in response time analysis, they are effectively asking the other person to drop everything to make them number one. The recipient did not ask for that or want that.
Frankly, it is disrespectful to expect someone to drop everything to respond to you. Just because you can reach me at almost any time doesn’t mean you have the right to a response.
Those who expect and even demand prompt replies from their friends and family also do themselves an emotional disservice by placing confidence in their friendships and self-worth upon the promptness of a reply. If my not responding to you immediately causes you anxiety, that may be a problem to discuss with a therapist rather than forcing those around you to alter their behavior to accommodate your anxiety.
Don’t count on the actions of others to make you feel better in any aspect of life, especially when it is unfair to expect everyone you speak to to be directly available.
When people expect you to respond instantly, you must keep your phone close to you at all times and pick it up at every buzz or ping you hear. This behavior feeds into what is the biggest problem facing our generation today: technology addiction.
Having the urge to constantly check your phone — and, once you pick it up, doom-scroll on your favorite social media app — hurts people’s sense of self and focus on the important things and people around them.
The well-documented mental health crisis that the United States is in the midst of is likely related to the overuse and rapid proliferation of social media technology.
There is so much connection and information at our fingertips — more than the human brain, which hasn’t meaningfully changed in hundreds of years, was evolved to handle. This proliferation of information that social media companies deliberately design to capture and hold onto our attention, along with the endless comparisons between the self and others on social media, can do nothing but harm the psyche.
Instead of expecting people to always have their phones on them and be ready to respond, we should all be more open and unoffended if people do not have the time or want to respond. We should encourage people on their journey to distance themselves from their technology, regardless of why they chose to do so. Their relationship to technology, and thus their availability for a response, is an individual’s choice and an individual’s choice alone.
There is no need to take a delayed or nonresponse personally — it does not say anything about you, your character or your closeness to that person, and it is possible to have a close relationship without constant text conversations. All of my closest friends understand this dynamic: they leave me on read; I leave them on read, and we won’t talk for days. Yet, they are still the people in the world who know me best, and we care for each other deeply.
In fact, I feel closest to these people because I know that we do not carry a set of expectations that we want the other one to abide by — we are not acting to impress; we are who we are. Don’t let uneasiness at a delayed response step in between that.
It is time to end anxiety and expectations over response times. This norm helps neither those expected to respond nor those awaiting a response. Dropping this expectation will end overanalysis, ease anxiety-inducing waits, promote respect for others’ time and curb technology addiction. It could even help you discard the veil of expectations to form stronger connections with friends, old and new.