A friend texts. You read it. Wouldn't the next logical step be to take five seconds to respond? For some people, answering texts is a burden they'd rather swipe away from. It's like the days of not answering when the phone rings by feigning absence. But, with texting, there's no excuse.
Yet, we've all done it, right?
However, not everyone has lousy smartphone etiquette. Sometimes, the timing is an inconvenience. Your hands are full. Maybe you're driving, in which case, props for keeping your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.
Your friend can wait to hear back from you.
Unfortunately, people procrastinate. It can take days for friends to reply to a text after initially putting it off for whatever reason. But what's more crummy? When you forget about the text altogether. Oops.
Twitter dug up their share of excuses for the majority of people who are procrastinators or have short-term memory.
One user shared that one or two things happen upon notification. "I either reply in 0.2 seconds or 3-5 business days."
There's a window of time. How long is yours?
Sometimes, we'd like to imagine that we've completed the task.
"It's not that I don't wanna reply it's more like I seen your message & replied in my head and I forgot to. Or I'm taking a nap," tweeted @highitsleslie.
Are you guilty of selective memory?
Guilty as charged.
You can chalk it up to attention deficit. But then, have a workaround.
There are different levels of texts that need addressing. A student admitted on Quora that she forgets to respond to texts "all the time," but she shared the logic behind the unanswered texts.
That being said majority of the time I do see the message and read it within 20 minutes of the person sending the text. If the person is saying anything of interest or of value (more than a "hey" ) and I know that the message will lead to a conversation that doesn't fizzle out after 2 or 3 messages I'll generally respond right away.
However, if this person notoriously only texts the standard "hey, what's up?" with a maximum of one or two more replies, responding falls low on my priority list and they get over looked. This also applies to all people I talk to where the conversation is basically the same every time we text.
Overall, if you're worried about people saying they just missed your text try to look at their life from they're point of view. If they're extremely busy cut them so slack otherwise maybe your texts just don't hold their interest.
Some would argue, however, that they're all just excuses.
Life is hard.
Growth Guided offered their top 10 reasons why people don't answer your texts. They had no problem telling it like it is. "Some people work for a living, get off their back! They are WORKING… smarten up, the world doesn't revolve around you."
Sometimes it's an innocent, technical issue. "They just installed the new iOS and lost all their contacts (yes, even your precious contact info). They don't recognize your number and are worried that your text might be from that person they gave their number to the night before."
This is purely psychological. "They are upset with you and decide to be passive aggressive with you instead of facing the problem head on up in a mature forward thinking fashion."
But the number one reason is a scorcher.
The person really doesn't like you.
So the minute you send out a message and don't hear back immediately, remember, they're either busy, or you're not at the top of their priority of friends that require the common courtesy of a timely response.
H/T - Twitter, GrowthGuided
@kileywrestling/Bluesky
