Texting Etiquette: Biggest Pet Peeve
I think people need to learn a little texting etiquette. Texting has been a great advancement that allows people to communicate instantly anywhere they are. It allows you to multi-task and manage a conversation with multiple people at a time or continue a conversation while doing other things. You would think that with this grand ability people would be more responsive and more social.
Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case. Even though texting is a great technological evolution, people still tend to treat it with old school mentalities. My biggest pet peeve with texting is the no response. This wouldn’t be so bad if it happened just every so often with one text message because glitches happen and maybe you didn’t get it, but when it is multiple text messages the odds that they all didn’t make it is almost nil.
Some people seem to treat text messages like people using the answering machine to screen phone calls. A text comes in, they read it, and then they decide what to do with it. This was fine for answering machines when anyone could call you or you got a phone call when you were too busy to have a conversation. Getting a text message doesn’t have those pit falls. The only people who will text you are the ones that you have given your phone number out to. Also since it is a text message people don’t expect instantaneous responses. If they need that they would call.
So it frustrates me how some people ignore their text messages. Now some will say, “What if the other person was busy?” I understand that this could happen, but there are still many things you can do that would at least let the other person know you weren’t just ignoring them. If you are busy and just aren’t checking your phone, wouldn’t the polite thing to do be to respond once you did see it and explain you were busy? If you are just too busy to hold a conversation but read the text message, couldn’t you respond with even a simple “Sorry, I’m busy”? I don’t think either of those things are hard to do or would be that time-consuming.
I’ve heard some people say they sometimes don’t respond because they don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. This is a completely BS answer. What do you think completely ignoring someone’s text messages does? If you think telling someone you are busy right now hurts their feelings how can you not see that ignoring the message completely will do at least the same thing?
Also if you find yourself ignoring the same person’s text messages over and over, why don’t you tell them that you aren’t interested in talking to them? It will save them the thought and effort of trying to talk to you and it will spare you having to see their text messages. Wouldn’t that be better for all parties involved instead of just leading someone on and having to continually receive their text messages?
Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t see the point in ignoring someone’s text messages unless you don’t care to talk with them or don’t care about them in general. If that is the case then just be upfront and honest with the person and let them know.
