What is a Read Receipt?
The addiction of read receipts to social messaging apps such as “WhatsApp” can be seen as one of the most anxiety and depression inducing implications of social media. Read receipts are the little blue ticks or time codes that appear once a recipient has read a message sent to them.
Good or Bad?
While read receipts can be seen as helpful, stopping the anxiety of knowledge as to whether or not someone had in fact read a message or just simply not seen it, whereas without them you could be none the wiser. In fact it could be suggested that read receipts are in fact more damaging than not.
I find that one of the most frustrating things for people with anxiety or a worrying personality is seeing someone has gone to the effort of opening a message and then not been bothered to reply. ‘Why haven’t they replied?’, ‘did I say something wrong?’, ‘do they not like me?’, questions like these and many more are likely to running through people’s minds continuously until a reply pings up on screen. If someone simply hasn’t replied to a message all sorts of thoughts, feelings and ideas come running through the persons mind, this is normally when they’re insecurities come out to play.
These insecurities are probably tiny little things, which aren’t really an issue, but at times like this, minds will go into overdrive and always come up with the worst situations possible to play on said person’s insecurities. Anxious people sit there questioning their own and other people motives in a worried state, whilst the person on the other side simply ‘couldn’t be bothered to reply’ or maybe just ‘forgot’. Anxious people probably know the real reason for the delayed response, deep down, but the worrying thoughts will always bubble to the surface.
Did I Get a Message?
Here we find ourselves with another issue – ‘did I get a message?’, ‘I’m sure I just saw my phone light up’, ‘I’ll just check it’. Do you find yourself checking your phone a bit too often? Do you find yourself imagining you saw your phone light up with a message even though nothing’s come through in the past hour? Why do we all obsess so much? Shouldn’t we be too interested in our real life to care about the virtual conversations?
Take a Look at This Video
This video shares different ideas and opinions people have on read receipts and how they can often worry about saying the wrong thing, or being ignored. Many people enjoy seeing the read receipts as they like the knowledge for themselves, but would rather other people didn’t see if they themselves had read the message or not. Other people find themselves constantly checking their phones just in case there is a message.
Please consider the following resources if you are, or if you have a friend who is suffering:
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