What’s your opinion on sending texts late at night? (Use whatever definition of “late” you want.) I am specifically not talking about texts regarding traditionally late-night activities like going out with friends, booty call, drunk texting, whatever. I mean “normal” texts, maybe to friends or coworkers or clients, family, etc.
My wife treats them like phone calls - if she wouldn’t call somebody at that hour of the evening, she won’t send a text, and will wait until the next morning to send it.
I, however, treat it like an email - it doesn’t matter when I send it, they can read it and respond to it the next day or whenever they like.
My wife’s main concern is that the text notification beep in the middle of the night is rude and may wake them up. My opinion is that almost all phones now have a “do not disturb” function - if they’re getting woken up in the middle of the night, they should turn it on (and if they haven’t turned it on, my text can’t be the first notification to ever arrive late at night, so it must not be a problem for them).
What’s your opinion? (I will say, in virtually all cases she’s much more polite than me anyway )
I leave my phone in another room. I usually have it muted anyway as I’m giving lectures during the day and I don’t want more audible distractions annoying my students when they already have to endure me. So send me all the texts you want, any time. A handful of people literally do send me late-night texts, often long screeds at that.
If I were the sort to send texts, I would likely send them at night as well, when I was in the throes of insomnina and had some thoughts I desperately wanted to express. I just usually send an e-mail instead, as I find texting much slower and more awkward than a keyboard.
So I don’t view texting as really any different than sending e-mails, and feel it’s acceptable to send them any time.
There’s one exception: the phone addict who isn’t really phone-savvy. If they can’t leave their phone alone, and they can’t figure out how to mute it, I would likely respect their desire to have uninterrupted sleep. But I’m not sure I’d be having Deep Thoughts™ text-athons with them in the first place.
Ya, I text whenever I have something I want to tell some one. They get to control the phone on their end to determine how that effects them.
My brother in law is a later night person and sends me texts after he gets off work at 2 am when I’m asleep. I have no problem responding at 5 am when I get up. Texting is great for asynchronous communication.
I regret to inform you that you’re wife is right, again. She usually is.
If I receive an email or text in the late evening or middle of the night, I’m focused more on wondering what the hell is wrong with them that they couldn’t wait until normal human operating hours to send the almost certainly unimportant message. But I’m judgy that way.
I wouldn’t send one to a client or a coworker though. I feel that would step over the line of unprofessional. A lot of people don’t want to think about work stuff after they’ve clocked out for the day and I try to respect that.
Well, I mute my phone when I go to bed, so folks can text me as much as they want. It won’t disturb me. I’ve sent late texts with the idea that they would be seen in the morning when the person wakes up.
People often don’t realise they haven’t turned their phone to mute. Many people also keep the sound on because a late night text could be an emergency call from a family member - for example, I have ageing and ailing parents, if I get a text at midnight from my brother who’s usually first responder for them, I need to know about it. I don’t need to know if my best friend is bored.
Time zone differences exist you know… If I receive a text late at night and I see it, that means I am awake, so there is no issue. If I am asleep, my phone is on Do Not Disturb, so I don’t see it til morning. I wonder what the hell is wrong with people that they don’t turn on Do Not Disturb if they don’t want to be disturbed…
Why do you assume you’re the rare exception that knows how phones work?
I don’t let insomniacs and workaholics interrupt my evening and night. I simply expressed my reaction once I have my morning coffee and pick up my phone at the start of the day.
I find it interesting a couple people mentioned they leave their phones in a different room. I used to do this (I also have never had a TV in my room) because I like basically being undisturbed while sleeping. But maybe partially due to my aging and partially due to a personal anecdote, I now make sure I have a phone in whatever room I’m sleeping in. A friend of mine who had been divorced at around 57, died not long after his 60th birthday because he had a serious gastrointestinal bleed. He woke up from it, but the blood loss was bad and fast, he had crawled down to the landing of his staircase when he lost consciousness and bled out. The nearest phone to where he was sleeping was in his downstairs living room. If he had had a cell phone next to his bed he very likely would have been alive today (or if he had still been married his wife would’ve been there to call for help.) Since he was alone, it wasn’t until 3 days later when his employer sent the sheriff’s department over on a wellness check that he was discovered.
Yep. I send texts without regard to the time, assuming they will be answered whenever the recipient chooses. I don’t bother with Do Not Disturb, as I take my hearing aid out when I go to sleep.
If it’s an emergency, why are they sending a text instead of a phone call? Texts are for things that can be answered whenever the recipient happens to have a free moment and notices they have a text waiting on their phone. They’re inherently asynchronous. Phone calls, however, are inherently synchronous: The only way to have a phone conversation is if both parties are on the phone at once. If someone texts me about an emergency, I’m probably not going to find out for hours.
It’s the responsibility of the owner of a phone to ensure that their phone won’t bother them when they don’t want to be bothered. This does not require any particular level of tech savvy: I accomplish it by simply leaving my phone in a different room from my bedroom, where I won’t be woken up by the relatively quiet text-message alert (but would be woken by the phone ringtone, in case anyone does need to call me about an actual emergency, or by the alarm feature that gets me up on time).
FYI I believe most phones the DND function will mute things like text alerts but the phone’s alarms will still function as normally. I would suspect playing an audio file like white noise would still work even with DND up.
Not everyone subscribes to the same phone etiquette, as evidenced by the very existence of this thread. When my mother broke her hip, my brother sent us all (siblings/nieces/nephews) a WhatsApp message - it was the fastest way to reach the most people. Different generations use their phone in different ways, I’m not sure my nieces and nephews EVER make an actual call.
I don’t send late night texts if there’s a chance of disturbing someone like me (I keep the phone charging next to the bed since there are very few notifications of any kind late at night).
This sounds a bit like the telephone sales rep who blithely posted (years ago) about how you must be OK with being disturbed by calls during meals, since you have a phone.
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