We know we’re not the only young professionals with a never-ending to-do list and in desperate need of at least another 5 hours (ideally) in the day.
There’s simply never enough time in our increasingly fast-paced, competitive, and ever-so-stimulating cities to do all that we need to—from work projects and errands to engagement parties and even calling back our poor old mother.
That’s why it irks us whenever people feel the need to call us when they don’t feel we’re replying promptly enough to texts.
‘Cause you know what, a text message just isn’t what it used to be—and people need to stop pretending that it is.
Here’s why:
There’s too much happening at our fingertips.
Think about it: these days, we have access to every form of communication at our fingertips on our smartphone—email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tinderthe list goes on. There could be dozens of non work-related attempts at communication from all angles throughout the day. If you replied to them all, you may quickly find yourself out of that job you worked so hard to score.
Sometimes you don’t have the time to open the floodgates for back-and-forth banter.
With certain friends, you just know that the response to a text message is going to be taken as an open invitation for an hour-long banter back and forth. While that’s fun and all, it can wait until the evening (or a better time) while you can dish the latest gossip (complete with emoticons) over a glass of wine and your favourite show.
Some messages don’t need a response.
Some text messages simply don’t invite a reply, follow through or a “have a good day” closer. Compared to when it was a newer thing (if you can remember that far back) text messaging has lost a little of its novelty and formality. It seems the less words we have to type, the better. Sure, it’s rude to leave questions unanswered (unless they’re from that creeper who won’t leave you alone), but, we assure you, it’s not personal if we go MIA for a bit after any sentence without a question mark.
If it’s really that important, an old-fashioned phone call is best.
Though we all thought texting was the most efficient (and less rattling in the dating department) way to communicate in its onset, in recent years it’s made us appreciate the value of a good old-fashioned phone call. We mean, the information you can convey in a 5-minute call could be the same to that of 20-plus texts back and forth. Meaning, sometimes you’d rather wait until a good time to actually call the person back.
You can see when someone’s typing.
Another reason texting has changed is the fact that on most of our devices, we can see when the person on other end is typing. This means that, if a recipient sees those three dots, they most definitely expect a subsequent text message. So if you have to take a call mid-sentence, an forget about the text, it usually doesn’t go over very well.
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