Is texting not a conversation, or is it just me?
Is texting not a conversation, or is it just me?
When texting people in general I find it frustrating that people don’t seem to view it as a conversation. If someone texts me and I catch it and text back right away, I get frustrated when people don’t return the favor. They might text back 5, 10, minutes or an hour or more later. Why did you text me if you didn’t want to have a conversation? Why am I the one sitting here waiting for a response?
It’s like someone sitting down across from at a table and asking you “Hey, how ya doin?” You respond “Great! what’s up?” and they just sit there for 10 minutes not saying anything.
Might be the whisper of ASD in my ADHD contributing to not understanding how this social interaction actually works vs how I think it should work.
Anyone else have this grinding their gears?
E: apparently it’s just me!
Thanks for the replies, everyone.
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I also have ASD and I actually have the complete opposite view! I don’t like it when people text me expecting me to reply instantly, because I don’t feel like text conversations have a well-defined start and end. That bothers me in a “unfinished business” way. As in, if I respond immediately, and then they respond immediately, and so on and so forth, when does it end? Nobody really says goodbye in instant messaging anymore. I appreciate people who understand that I’m going to take my sweet time to respond, especially because I don’t use my smartphone often anyway (as it’s very distracting and can be a huge time sink for me).
I like to let all my friends know that if something is important or they want an imminent response, they should just call me instead. That way I don’t have that feeling that “the ball is in my court” after the call ends, i.e. that I need to check my phone and respond to something before someone arbitrarily decides it’s been too long and gets upset with me.
I am a “zillennial” (born in the late 90s), and one of the things I miss about the early days of the internet with stuff like MSN is the focus on statuses (online, busy, offline) and how accurate they were. If someone were marked as online, you knew they were on the computer at that very moment and it’s not just whatever status they had set on their smartphone or whatever.
I second this with Agoraphobic AutADHD. I desperately miss the days of flip phones and simpler IM clients. The "requirement" of having a smartphone in this day & age means that, at a low level, there is always a baseline anxiety present in me from wake to sleep.
I'm a person that needs alone time every day or I can't fully destress so knowing that anyone can always get ahold of me, or if they can't, they expect immediate responses whenever possible stresses me to holy high hell! Thankfully the friends I do have all understand this, so even if a week or a month passes between messages, it's treated like no time has passed at all. Without that, friendship is nearly impossible lol
I have ADHD and schizoaffective, ugh this is my life in the digital age also. Sometimes I just cannot with people and phones. And then people take it personally, unintentionally causing me to crawl even further under my tinfoil lol. Glad to hear you have some understanding friends.