Yep. and I was saying that people who have opinions like yours are best weeded from your life as quickly as possible since they take no responsibility for dealing with things they don’t like that they have total control over.
While I will follow other people’s preferences, I do think the “text whenever” side makes more sense. It’s more reasonable for you to manage your own disruptions than for other people to have to remember how not to disrupt you. You know the exact time(s) when a notification would be unwelcome, while the other person can’t. They’re merely guessing. Everything would be smoother if anyone could text whenever.
The problem is that not everyone sets these things up. They don’t even use do not disturb mode, or they don’t know how to set it up where it lets through the numbers they need to be “on call” for. They don’t know how to set it up where phone calls go through. Or maybe they do know some of this stuff, but find it too big a hassle to mess with.
It seems to me that there needs to be an accepted channel of communication where you can contact someone at times convenient to you, and they can respond when it’s convenient for them.
My current strategy is to use emails when I’m not sure if they’ll be awake. Everyone I know has the notifications on for emails, but no sound. So they’ll be notified when they choose to pick up their phone, or choose to check their email elsewhere.
But I would not be surprised to learn that some people do still leave those annoying notification sounds on, even during times they don’t want to be disturbed, and thus would be annoyed by even an email. But it seems like you probably should have that on silent, due to all the different types of email there are that don’t care about your local time.
Geez, 9pm is “late night” and too late for texting? I’ve never known a single person who was in bed asleep at 9pm. Probably most of the texting that my family & friends do is after 9pm.
Evidently you’ve never seen any of the many, many movies and TV shows where people send texts in emergencies because they don’t want the bad guys to hear them. You’ll change your tune the next time you’re caught up in a daring daylight robbery by a gang out for one last big score! 
Seriously, though, I did receive an emergency text once—my son was stranded in a town about 30 miles away on a cold winter night, and his phone battery was dying. He texted me because he figured a text wouldn’t drain the battery as quickly; if he called, his phone might have died before he could tell me where he was.
Sure, I can see the occasional emergency text, so I take back my “never” - how about “almost never”?
I’m on OP’s side. I’m old-fashioned and still turn my phone off overnight, unless I’m on call for work, in which case I have do not disturb configured so that only phone calls and the work messaging app make a sound.
I don’t keep my phone on at night, but I do think it’s better not to text late. It’s more considerate. Yes, people can selectively do DND, but they might very well miss important/emergency information if they do, because they don’t always know who information might come from. And you can say people shouldn’t text emergency/important, but they do and that’s the reality.
And, of course, if you’re texting someone close to you, you might be someone they’d allowed for emergency reasons.
Sure, and I agree that a phone call is the preferred method.
If I was calling someone in an emergency and the call went to voicemail, I’d probably send a followup text anyway after leaving the voice message. They’re more likely to see the text message before checking the voicemail.
I use texts in lieu of emails. Like many other people, my inbox is overflowing, so I use texts for short-term coordination.
I send texts when necessary and expect the recipient to control how the texts will be received, same as for emails or phone calls.
My phone is happily charging in my home office at night, so people can text me all they want.
I live on the left coast, so someone from NY texting at 8:30 am their time will get me at 5:30 am.
Basically no one should do an emergency text to me. You need to understand how the recipient of your message works, so “I never use the phone for voice” isn’t a good reason to not call for an emergency.
Broken hips are not all that uncommon in elderly women & are not typically imminently fatal. I could see it being an emergency for the nearest relative with a key to grand/mom’s house to let EMS in but for the others, they probably wouldn’t be allowed any further than the ER waiting room if they did go to the hospital at 2 or 3 am.
But this is the system we have adopted for phone calls. We don’t call in the middle of the night. Sure, we don’t know the “exact time” when a call would be unwelcome, but we try to figure it out and do our best. Even land line phones can have their ringer turned off, but we don’t expect people will do that every night when they go to sleep.
So, I’m sticking with "don’t text unless 1) is a reasonable hour, or 2) you know the recipient doesn’t care/turns off their sounds.
To be consistent, the email rule should be the same, but emails come in with such frequency that I would imagine everyone who cares has turned off the notifications. I get between 10 and 25 emails while I sleep most nights.
Earlier this week I was very busy with a number of things, including attempting to sell our pontoon boat. I had ads on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. The first day I received over 200 messages, but I never found time to deal with the replies.
That night I woke up at 3 am to take our puppy out to pee (I have an alarm set). After, I couldn’t fall back to sleep, so I went through and responded to all my messages. Surprisingly, I received answers to 15 of my replies as I worked on this.
Make of this what you will.
With emails, though, the default isn’t to get beeping messages, is it? Isn’t that something you have to turn ON and not OFF? I’m not even sure how to set up notifications every time an email comes through on my phone. I’m sure it’s simple to figure out, but I’ve never bothered; my wife doesn’t have sounds for that turned on; none of my friends that I’ve noticed have it. I would presume emails are fine at any time because I simply don’t expect anyone to have an alert set constantly for emails – like you said, how would they get any sleep?
The other thing with texts and why I don’t do it is simply that I cannot remember the last time I got an unsolicited text (that wasn’t spam) after midnight. I literally cannot remember. I’m not even entirely sure it’s ever happened. So I assume since none of my friends are bothering me at 2 a.m. with whatever nonsense is floating through their head, I’m not gonna bother them either.
My phone will only do one set of DND programming. So, I can either set my DND for office times (I really don’t want my phone ringing with a junk call in the middle of a meeting), or I can set DND for at night. I am a firm believer in don’t call after 9:00, unless it’s an emergency (or it’s a scheduled time), and don’t text after 10:00.
Isn’t DND a step beyond just turning the ringer off? Like, the call doesn’t even register/you can’t even see it?
I sleep with my phone and will send them any time unless I know I shouldn’t.
I do avoid drunk texting, thankfully I’ve never woken up to embarrassing texts I’ve sent.
No, you still get the vibration (if you want) and an indicator on the screen (if you want). I want. That way, if the wife calls, I know that she called, even if I can’t pick up at that precise moment.
Yes, at one time, this was the rule for phone calls. But that was an imperfect system that often resulted in non-emergency calls when you would have rather not been interrupted. We have better technology now that would result in a better system, one that would more reliably keep out the annoyances when we don’t want them.
Actually calling people is a lot more rare these days. The norm among those who implement what I said is that you text before you call. Texts only make a quick beeping noise or vibration, and thus are less intrusive than phone calls, so it’s become more and more the norm to text first and ask if it’s okay to call. (This also deals with the fact that you have your phone with you, even at work or otherwise busy.) That eliminates the need to have the old rule.
As for email, I see no reason that it should attempt to follow the rules of more contemporaneous communication. Email is modeled on the idea of sending letters. You aren’t expected to respond as soon as you get a letter, and you aren’t expected to only write a letter when someone else is up. The same has always been true of email. It would be like saying you shouldn’t reply to a post here at night.
We have the technology now to make sure that you are never disturbed at a time you would not want to be. It seems suboptimal to me that people would rather rely on an older custom developed for a different type of communication (phone calls) on less mobile devices (landlines).
I do personally expect the norm will change as those more used to the old system age out. The fact that there are so many people who say you should just mute your text notifications seems to indicate the shift is already happening.
So far this thread has been pretty general, but I’m curious:
Those of you who send late-night texts: What are you texting? (That is, whom are you texting and what are you communicating with them?