In October 2011, Apple created what would come to be one of the most contentious technological controversies of our time: To read receipt, or not to read receipt?
Read receipts, as anyone with an iPhone knows all too well, are small notifications that inform people when exactly someone has read an iMessage. Apple has historically allowed users to turn them on and off as they please, which has created something of an ethical quandary for our technology-engrossed society. For many, read receipts ushered in (or at the very least, symbolized) a waking nightmare of agony over being ignored, neglected, or deprioritized. For others (like me), the feature seemed like a great way to promote transparency in everyday text communications.
A quick look at some of the read receipt discourse so far: “[Read receipts] hold us all accountable for too-common lapses in communication (intentional or not). But what holds you accountable also holds you prisoner,” Allison P. Davis wrote in The Cut in 2014. ManRepeller's Harling Ross recently admitted that "turning on read receipts would make me feel like walking outside without pants on: exposed." In May 2015, Gizmodo's Adam Clark Estes suggested banning read receipts altogether.
I’d venture a guess that you, like most people, fall into the anti-read receipts camp. Maybe you think read receipts keep things a little too honest. Maybe you’ve had them crush your soul on occasion. Or maybe you just think they make you seem like an asshole. I get all of that—but hear me out.
Davis and Ross have a point: Read receipts do hold us accountable for our texting etiquette. They force us to be better, clearer communicators by robbing us of the comfort we might find in the alternate—the “delivered” receipt. But why do we feel the need to hide behind “delivered” when we know “read” is more honest? Most of us aren’t sketchy people who consistently ignore our loved ones; more often than not, we have good, rational, and totally understandable reasons for failing to respond to text messages ASAP. Is it such a hassle to just—I dunno—communicate that?
Last March, I got into a text-centric argument with my then-boyfriend. After we shot a few angry messages back and forth, he stopped responding to me. It was around 6:00 P.M. on a Saturday, and he went straight-up radio silent. I didn't hear from him again until the following afternoon. Here's a quick timeline of what went through my brain during those 18 or so hours:
- 6:30 P.M. Hmm, something must have come up. He probably hasn't even read my text yet.
- 7:00 P.M. OK. It's been an hour. This is getting ridiculous.
- 8:00 P.M. He's ignoring me. He is literally ignoring me.
- 8:30 P.M. Are you f*cking kidding me? This motherf*cker isn't even gonna respond?
- 9:00 P.M. Oh my god what if he died.
- 9:15 P.M. What if he's dead right now? What if that's why he's not responding to me?
- 9:30 P.M. He is dead. I am a widow now. Or whatever they call girlfriends whose boyfriends die. They should have a name for that. Marriage is just a contract anyway. I loved and lost—I deserve a title.
Of course, he hadn't died. He'd read my text right after I sent it and decided that ignoring me for 18 hours was the best course of action. But because he didn't have read receipts turned on, I didn't know that. I humored the idea—and realized it was probably the most rational explanation for the lapse in communication—but I didn’t know for sure. And when I don’t know something, my anxious brain jumps to the worst-case scenario, because that’s the kind of person I am. That’s the kind of person a lot of us are, though.
In October, my roommate sent her boyfriend a text message while she was vacationing in Europe. “When he didn’t text me back, I was convinced that the sudden distance had changed his mind about us,” she says. It didn’t. Her international plan was being wonky, and the text never went through. There she was, thinking he’d read it, when the truth was the message hadn’t made it to his phone at all.
Last weekend, a different friend of mine texted her partner to see if he wanted to hang out this weekend. “When he didn’t reply, I drafted 13 different versions of texts telling him to go f*ck himself,” she says. (For the record, she didn’t send any of them.) The next morning, he replied telling her his phone had died so he hadn’t seen her initial message. Oh yeah, and he’d love to hang out.
A popular argument among read receipt critics is that read receipts rob people of the ability to comfort themselves with best case scenarios. With “delivered,” we can imagine myriad obstacles that are preventing our well-intentioned loved ones from responding to us: They’ve lost service, their phones have died, they’re shopping for groceries—or otherwise occupied.
This argument holds some weight. When my then-boyfriend didn't text me back, I spent an hour thinking the best: Something's come up, and he hasn't read my text yet. But my comfort was short-lived; that first hour only delayed the inevitable realization that something hadn’t come up. He had read my text, and he wasn’t going to reply—either that, or something much worse had happened.
In this example—and the two others I cited—people having read receipts on would have provided the comfort of certainty we as humans are apt to seek. Whereas “delivered” leaves us in the dark, “read” offers clarity. That you’re being ignored is not a fun thing to figure out. But when given the choice between a swift slap in the face delivered via read receipt and 18 hours of agonizing anxiety, I’d pick the read receipt every time.
Plus, it's not like the read receipt is the issue. It was my then-boyfriend's choice to disappear on me for 18 hours. The read receipt would've functioned more like a no-nonsense friend who swooped in to be like, "Heads up, this guy's not prioritizing your feelings." In either situation, the reality would've been the same—the read receipt would've just clued me in to that reality a little earlier. We do ourselves a disservice when we shoot such a frank, honest messenger.
I know, I know—you have read receipts off because you can't immediately respond to every text you receive, or maybe you just don’t want to. I feel you. On Saturday, I put off replying to someone for hours, because I couldn’t focus on watching The West Wing and texting at the same time. On Sunday, I ignored everyone who texted me, because I was exhausted and not in the mood for human interaction. On Monday, I failed to reply to someone right away because I was holding a bunch of groceries and physically couldn’t text back. We all have entire lives to live between our text messages, and everyone should be more cognizant of that.
There are plenty of reasons why someone might not respond to a text the moment they see it, most of them entirely defensible. The last thing I want is for people to expect me to text them back ASAP—or for them to think I’m ignoring them just because I saw their text and haven’t replied quite yet. But I’ve found a way to manage those expectations while keeping read receipts on: I leave texts unread.
I turned on my read receipts in January 2016, and I haven’t had any trouble temporarily avoiding texts. (I temporarily avoided the hell out of texts this weekend, for example.) That’s because I read texts as they pop up on my home screen one by one, rather than opening them in the messaging app. If someone sends me something I can’t or don’t want to respond to right away, I just don't open it.
Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of turning on read receipts in the first place? Aren’t you being just as shady by selectively ignoring texts, even just temporarily? I don’t think so. Turning on read receipts is a way for me to ensure I’m being a compassionate, thoughtful, and honest member of a conversation. It doesn’t mean that I have to be firing on all cylinders every second of the day; it’s just that when I’m present in a conversation, I’m fully present (read receipts and all), and when I’m absent from a conversation, I’m fully absent. When my friend receives a read receipt, they know they have my full attention. And until then, they understand that I’m too busy—emotionally, physically, or otherwise—to respond to their query.
Plus, there’s a huge difference between delaying responding to someone’s text and ignoring them entirely (if you’re doing the latter, the least you can do is let your read receipt give them a heads up that they shouldn’t expect a response).
This approach has two unintended, but very welcome benefits. First: It holds me accountable. Every texts that goes unopened lives on in the form of a tiny notification that resides above the messaging app icon on my homescreen. It sits there, reminding me that I have a friend to get back to—functioning like a social to-do list that I didn’t have to write myself. I’m a pretty forgetful person, but this makes it downright impossible to drop the ball.
Second: You know how I said read receipts keep me from freaking the f*ck out? They keep my friends from freaking the f*ck out too. For example, there’s no chance any of my friends were worried when I didn’t reply to them ASAP this week. Why? Because they know I have read receipts on. (I’ve actually had friends tell me they’re glad I have my read receipts on, because they know when they can and can’t expect me to reply.) It was clear I wasn’t ignoring them and I hadn’t forgotten about them—I just wasn’t prepared to actively engage in a conversation yet. That saved them some mental agony, and it kept me from being inundated with worried follow-up texts.
But wait, what if I accidentally open a message I can't respond to right now? It happens. I typically send the person a text saying, "Hey—I'm doing XYZ so I can't reply right now. But I will soon!" Not only does that message assuage any fears the sender may have, but it also, you know, communicates the truth. Which is something we could all stand to do a little more of, right?
The oft-ignored upside of the read receipt is what usually happens once you get one: It pops up and is immediately followed by those three little dots that indicate someone is typing. Technology can feel so simultaneously social and isolating that these moments of presence and togetherness bring with them a specific kind of joy.
It is in these fleeting blips of connection that I feel most noticed. And prioritized. And seen, rather than exposed. Don’t we all?
