Early this morning (5am) I was out walking the dogs and saw that there is a show tonight that I wanted to go see. Since it’s a last minute event, I thought I should text my friends as soon as possible to see if they were interested. Well, it’s 5am.
Which got me thinking, should texting follow calling hours (the standard 9am-9pm) or can we text anytime?
Calling hours. Mobiles beep when they receive texts. You probably woke someone up and they now love you.
Text anytime. If someone’s phone beeping once disturbs their sleep that much, they should silence their phone while they sleep.
Wouldn’t someone who didn’t want to hear a beep during a given span (sleeping, or otherwise) turn off that notification, or the phone itself?
Anytime.
I use my phone as an alarm and I am often on call and need to answer emergency calls during the night.
Please don’t text me in the middle of the night unless it’s urgent.
what I do for my kids (who have radically different sleep schedules than I do) is compose the text when I’m thinking of it and at a more approriate time just hit send.
A lot of people keep their cells nearby for emergencies, and silencing them makes them pointless for this purpose. This does not mean they want to read about how drunk you are at 4 am.
If you wouldn’t call them at the same time, then you shouldn’t text them. Calling and texting both make noise.
Fine, but that doesn’t mean you need audible notification of text messages.
If it’s urgent, I’m not going to waste time with a text message. I’m going to make a telephone call.
Okay I’ll grant you that and if it was a real problem in my life I would probably take the time to change adjust the notification of text messages before bed and upon waking.
Cell programming opportunity! Time of day profiles for alert settings. Someone get on that please.
In reality I’ve only had one text message wake me in the last couple years and my husband is still paying for it 2 weeks later. Drunk text ME from your conference will you!
I seriously am baffled that you think every single person you may ever text should change the settings on their phone every single night before they go to bed rather than you just refraining from rudely texting them in the middle of the night.
Could you explain the exact logic behind this?
Almost everyone has audible notifications for text messages on all the time. Just because you may not, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t expect them to.
Everyone could turn off their landline phones at night, but no one does. Would you call them at night because they could have turned them off if they wanted to?
Even ignoring the above, keeping phone calls on, but text messages on is not necessarily easy on all phones.
I’m actually a little baffled that people don’t already do this. I sleep with my phone on the night stand, and like Moonlitherial I use it as an alarm and sometimes have to take calls from work. But I long ago got into the habit of turning off all of the extraneous notifications, like text alerts and appointment reminders (that often go off at midnight on the day of an all-day event).
I vote for sending anytime, because even if the notification isn’t silenced, I can’t imagine that a quick beep is enough to wake most people up.
I second this, almost. My phone (a Blackberry) goes into “Bedside Mode” by default when you plug it in to a charger. Since I plug it in just before I go to bed and unplug it when I wake up, this works dandy. I have tweaked the Bedside Mode alerts so that I get a ring if it’s a phone call, an audible wake-up alarm, but no alert at all for anything else, as even a vibration will generally wake me up when it rattles on the nightstand and I don’t want to be woken for emails and tetxs. When it’s in non-Bedside Mode (unplugged), I have different patterns of vibrations for calls, texts, and emails.
But, I know that many of the folks I communicate with don’t do this. So, even though to me a text is more like an email and can wait till morning, I don’t assume the person on the other end views it that way. So, I text during calling hours.
ETA: a quick beep will wake me up, but I am a pretty light sleeper.
I hate getting texts in the middle of the night or early morning. I don’t usually silence my phone in case someone needs to call with an emergency and being woken up by a text chime is pretty obnoxious and startling.
It’s not like they’re going to wake up at 5am and run to buy tickets to the event, right? Why not just wait a few hours?
I would text anytime. I try not to worry about stuff like that.
Text anytime. If you don’t want to hear text alerts, turn then off. It’s trivial to have separate phone profiles for day and night, just as you would for different work or social situations.
I don’t already do it because I don’t interact with anyone who’s going to text me for something stupid in the middle of the night.
Shall I also unplug my land line and muffle my door knocker every night before I go to bed?
It’s only trivial if you have a relatively sophisticated phone. I could change text notifications on my dumb-as-rocks-phone, but I’d have to dig through lots of menus and change several settings every time. Of course, it’s not a problem for me usually. I can recall only one time when I was woken by a text message late at night.
I am in near jaw-dropping disbelief at the number of posters who think it is ok to text any time!
Incredibly rude, is how I view it. Why should it be incumbent upon the target of your trivial drunk text to change their phone settings? Why can you not refrain from sending a text at midnight? If it’s stupid enough that it doesn’t rate a phone call, why can’t you wait until tomorrow? The other person should pay for your impulsiveness by losing sleep?
I can’t believe I’m getting so worked up about something like this, but man…kids today. And that’s all I can say without getting a visit from a Mod.