Why Texting Expectations Are Straining Your Relationships

Let's say it's Monday morning. You sit down to work and get a few things done, until your phone pings with a message from your friend. You respond quickly, then get back to work... and then your friend texts back. You respond and say "gotta get back to work," which works for a few more minutes, until your mom texts you. And while you're on your phone, you may as well open Instagram.

Sound familiar?

"People are going to be distracted if you're throwing distractors in front of them," says Joseph Bayer, Ph.D., an associate professor at The Ohio State University who studies the psychology of communication technologies and social connection. "I don't think there's any debate about that."

Part of tending to our digital well-being is managing notifications so that we don't feel like we're wasting significant chunks of our days checking our phones, he says.

We're in a "post-constant-connectivity moment," according to Bayer, where connectivity is so embedded in our experience that it's taken for granted, but there's also a "backlash" about whether constant connectivity is even something we want.

"We're not getting rid of phones, at least at this point, right? And if we do get rid of phones, it'll be for something newer that's even more close to our attention spans," Bayer says.

Checking your phone is a "highly habitual behavior," Bayer says, that you can challenge with reflection and mindfulness.

"Batching" refers to waiting to address all of our notifications at once, Bayer says. Most phones have a setting, or third-party app, that helps batch our notifications so they are delivered at specific times of the day.

A 2019 study found that people who "batched" their notifications to be delivered only three times a day experienced more productivity, attentiveness, a better mood, lower stress, and fewer phone interruptions and felt like they were in greater control of their phones1.

Chances are you don't open each email as soon as you get it (especially since so many of them are spam) and allow them to interrupt your day all day long, every day. Maybe you block out time to deal with all of your emails once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once before leaving work. Or maybe you triage emails so you allow your most important emails to interrupt your workflow, but others sit by the sidelines until you're ready to tackle all messages at once.

"There's always stuff coming in," Bayer says.

Unlike work emails, which often need to be responded to immediately or within a timely manner, you get to set the precedent for social texts. Digital communication expectations are handled like other social expectations: by setting your own boundaries and communicating them when necessary.

Maybe some text conversations would be more effective as phone calls. Instead of texting your mother all day long, maybe you give her a quick call each night before bed.

And remember: You're engaging with real people, not technologies, so use the social skills that work for you IRL.

There are a few built-in features you can utilize to help manage your messages, Bayer says. You can turn off read receipts so people don't know whether you've read your message, allowing you to take more time to respond.

You can also use a third-party app or your phone's built in setting (for Apple products, there's a "scheduled summary" option for notifications in Settings) to bundle notifications into a summarized delivery at more convenient times to you, limiting their ability to interrupt your day.

If only it were as simple as deciding not to check your phone...and then not checking your phone. Usually, we need to get a little trickier when it comes to convincing our minds to not compulsively check our lock screen.

"I think most people tend to have their phones near them, but they come up with either technical or mental tricks to try to create more space between them," Bayer says.