Facebook Messenger though is also a respond when you want sort of thing. I’ve had many a Messenger conversation where people don’t get back to me until a day later… like an email. It’s just quite a bit more casual than emails.
It’s a case of ‘know your audience’. I have people I text whenever, and some I use the no call = no text parameter.
Personally, my phone charges overnight in another room, and is on Do Not Disturb. I’ll catch up in the morning.
They may want to be disturbed, but not by you. I’m reminded of a certain Pit thread…
Personally, people who persist in texting me at night after their one friendly rebuff get blocked. I’ve only had to do this to one brother and one friend, though.
Around 20 years ago, before I met my gf, I went through a party every night phase. A half dozen or so times I’d be with a woman at 3 am and ask if she wanted to hear something funny.
Then I’d call my brother. At 3 am on speakerphone. The funny part was how wide awake and serious he sounded, answering on the second ring. It was a howl.
Then one time his wife grabbed the phone and started screaming at me. (I always said he coulda done better)
But my brother never blocked me.
Thank for grading my idea of an emergency 
Before cell phones, when my mom was taken to emergency one night, my husband and I were startled awake by my sister and sister in law both standing in our bedroom door calling my name. Our only phone was on the wall in the kitchen and we hadn’t heard the numerous calls they’d made.
I remember being really glad my husband didn’t keep his gun anywhere close.
Well, it’s clear that everyone has a different standard of what is late at night, whether you should turn off your phone, put it on DND or leave it on, what is appropriate content for a text and how to treat it. The OP is unanswerable.
I don’t turn off my phone at night. Yes, I’m annoyed at late night texts because I consider them to be just a small step down from phone calls. When I’m not working in the evening, I like to go to bed around 9:30 so I can get sufficient sleep by the time I get up at 6:00. That’s me. YMMV
One of the reasons that I leave it on because our county has an emergency text system called NIXLE. Quite often it’s about a road closure due to an accident or something trivial. Sometimes it’s about how and where our county is on fire or some other disaster. I kinda want to know that.
Another reason is that my kids text even in a urgent situation and they work late at night. My sister who is the point person for my elderly mother lives in an area with spotty cell coverage where sometimes a text will go through when a call won’t. I, personally, have several reasons to leave my ringer on.
My phone is on vibrate and in the kitchen charging late at night so I guess I don’t care who texts me. I’ll see it in the morning at some point.
I don’t text anyone else late at night because my phone is in the kitchen, charging .
Several people have indicated they charge their phones at night in rooms other than the bedroom. Is this a deliberate effort to avoid hearing texts and calls? Or is there some other reason not to charge it where you’re sleeping?
I can’t speak for anyone else- but if I am charging my phone overnight it’s in another room because I don’t have any spare outlets to charge it in my bedroom.
Not really in my case. I just have the charger plugged in near a handy spot in the kitchen and the kitchen is one of the first rooms I pass through as I get home. So I walk in, plug it in, and then go about my evening. Now and then over the course of the evening, I’ll glance at it as I walk by to see if anything new came up and maybe unplug it if it’s fully charged early on. My bedroom is a less convenient place for it since it’s at the end of the house and I only go there when it’s time to sleep.
Except in a thread talking about late night texts & what constitutes an emergency it is appropriate. If you woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me someone broke their hip I’d be pissed. Different story if it’s an MI & they’re not expected to survive & I better get down to the hospital quick if I want to say my goodbyes.
Your wife is right, and you are wrong. Send a email.
Not every phone has a "do not disturb” function, some people forget to trun it on, and some people don’t as they want calls and texts that are genuine emergencies.
It would be nice if technology could help us solve this problem. Rather than mapping the importance or urgency of a given message onto the communication medium, we could specify the urgency of the message.
Of email, text, phone call, emails are the least-synchronous, but there’s no reason they couldn’t be urgent. Like, maybe I need to send you a Medical Power of Attorney document. That’s pretty urgent, but it’s not well-suited for text or a phone call. The current method is sort of like send the message using the best comm channel, then try all the other channels in the hopes of getting attention.
It would be nice if each of these could have an urgency rating, and then you could configure devices to alert you depending on time of day/setting/sender/urgency level. The person who is on call can set things from work to come through, but not the text from their buddy who’s at the bar, or their relative who forgot how time zones work.
Someday, maybe.
Yeah this is a frequent thing for me to consider.
For business relationships, email and phone rules seem pretty concrete IMO. Phone: Not after business hours unless its a genuine emergency. Email: Whenever you want, there is no implication that anyone needs to read it after business hours (though do you really want the recipient to know you are working on this thing an 2am?).
For text its somewhere between the two, but much closer to phone, definitely not late night IMO.
I really wonder how much this is age-related. For me, text is closer to email than a phone call as it does not require an immediate response. Texting is asynchronous communication, same as email.
I also don’t use text for work outside of work hours, but I also don’t send emails or call someone for work outside of work hours, because I’m not working outside work hours.
Sending ‘late night’ texts — I usually avoid it. But my definition of late night is not always the same as the recipient’s. And why should it be? I mean, it often is the same, but not always.
This thread is causing me to rethink things, and I now may start using DND at night. Due to varying work hours my night can start either at 1 AM or at 7 PM, or anywhere in between. It’s not reasonable for me to expect others to know that. And as many have said, we now have the technology to DND.
Come to think of it we’ve always had that DND ability. With land lines we could leave the phone off the hook and unplug the handset to avoid the loud signal that would sound when the phone was off the hook. And, voila! DND was activated.
So yes, I think I’ll start using DND. Good conversation, here.
I don’t text late, but you can text me 24-7.
My phone is muted when I don’t want to be disturbed.
mmm
I acted like you, until my daughter answered one of my midnight texts with “You woke me up. I have to get up early. Night.”
So now I act like your wife. I have one friend who, like me, doesn’t go to bed til one-ish. But with everyone else, I think “What if they didn’t turn their phone off, and it’ll be buzzing on their bedside table?”
I’m learning to restrain myself. Sometimes I’ll type the text, but not send it til mid-morning.
I think there’s a generational aspect to this. Boomers and older often think of texts as something you can send anytime, because they don’t sleep with their phones. Millennials and younger are more likely to try to avoid texting at hours when the other person might be asleep, because the phone is the beside alarm clock and TV.
A single text usually doesn’t wake me, at least not from a deep sleep. But I have an aunt who likes to send half a dozen group texts at 4 or 5 a.m., just because she’s awake and bored. Because she sends them to the whole family, someone’s bound to respond, resulting in endless pings. Nobody my age does this. I asked her several times to put these thoughts in an email, like a rational human being, and I was getting ready to block her when she finally acquiesced. I know how to use the DND feature, but when I’m not always getting up and going to bed at the same time, it’s inconvenient. It’s not that hard to send an email if you just HAVE to tell everyone your stupid flowers are blooming and it can’t wait until sunrise.
Relatedly, what is up with people who send lengthy emails with 20 questions, one of which is secretly urgent, and then get all cranky when they don’t get a same-day response? If you need to know X by tomorrow and you’re also idly wondering about A-W, text me about X, and then send an email about the rest. Or, if you’re allergic to texts, send an email in which the subject line indicates urgency with just the one question about X, and then follow up. If you want a freaking essay, you need to give me more time to complete the assignment. I have several relatives who do this, including my mother, and I cannot convince them that there isn’t a per-communications cost like a stamp on a letter.
Anyway, I feel like I share an intuitive understanding of how different forms of communication are to be used with pretty much everyone I know under 45, but it gets dicey after that.