Text Anxiety is Ruining Our Lives
The New York Times ran a funny (but was meant to be funny?) culture piece over the weekend in its Style section that reflected on those little ellipses that appear within iMessages while another person is writing a reply. Apparently they are causing us a whole lot of stress.
Please note: I realize this was written several days ago. I would have written it sooner, but I was ellipses-ing you.
Writer Jessica Bennett laments:
“… in my case — in the particularly high-stakes conversation at hand — it was the bubble that popped up to indicate typing, then disappeared to show he had stopped. Then came back up to show typing, then went away again. Then returned for what seemed like an eternity (he must be writing something deep, right?) only to produce a response so benign (you know, like “cool’’ or “ya’’) that it could only be topped by the humiliation of the bubble never returning at all (meaning he was flat-out ignoring me). Which I would know, of course, because I could see that he had read my message (that’s called a “read receipt’’).’’
The story goes on to describe Bennett’s text anticipating-induced anxiety and how the “tyranny of the text bubble’’ leads some iPhone users to extreme distress, anticipating a response that may or may not ever come. Washington-based writer Maryam Abolfazli offers her own poetic explanation of the elusive ellipses, saying, “The three dots shown while someone is drafting a message in iMessage is quite possibly the most important source of eternal hope and ultimate letdown in our daily lives.’’
The idea that the teeny-tiny text bubble is ruling our day-to-day lives is kind of ridiculous. First of all, not everyone has an iPhone. As far as I know, the inter-message notifier, which I now know as a “typing awareness indicator,’’ only exists when both users have iPhones and are chatting within iChat. Secondly, not everyone is as obsessed with their phone as you are.
However, anxiety surrounding digital communication can be very real. We’ve been conditioned to accept and anticipate a certain speed and rhythm in conversation that seems to get lost in most non-verbal mediums. Researchers have linked hyper-frequent texters to unhealthy sleeping habits and poor academic performance (and even carpal tunnel!) over time. One can only assume that the anxieties that led to these issues may also stem from the level of stress associated with texting.
While you might say iPhone users who are obsessed with constant mutual communication are just a select pool — I argue the anxiety extends to other messaging apps that many of us use in everyday lives. A co-worker said he didn’t share the text stress, but he recalled watching the indicator blink as his former editor replied on GChat with a sense of impending doom.
Another mentioned Facebook Messenger, whose app has a specific notification sound for when a user is typing and another when your message has been read. Also, as you type, and eventually hit send. The popping sounds are pleasant, but are also a melodic representation of a back-and-forth that validates every single tier of an exchange between two users. I’m stressed just thinking about it.
Single colleagues said the text anxiety pops up frequently during dating, when you’re just learning the communication patterns of someone new. You say something. He replies. You reply. He replies. You reply. He replies. You say something else. He begins to respond, the ellipses appear, but a message never gets delivered, and that’s like death. Saying, “I’m just not into you,’’ is as easy as choosing not to hit send. Then again, that could be a matter of tone — another disabling aspect lost on the texting world that I can’t even begin to dive into — or any other outside factors that may cause us to defer momentarily from a text conversation… you know, like life.
Bennett cites BlackBerry Messenger lead developer Gary Klassen as describing the way we view the action of “typing,’’ or as the iPhone visualizes it, the ellipses, to be like “eye contact.’’ “You know if they’re paying attention,’’ he said.
I suppose it echoes the same concept as the age old idiom, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’’ If a reply is typed and we’re not there to watch it, does an ellipses appear? Maybe the problem isn’t that they’re paying attention, maybe it’s that, we are.
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