I wear a smartwatch on my wrist. When the Bluetooth on my phone is on, I receive notifications on my watch, which then vibrates. This means that my day is full of physical reminders of every email, text message and social media notification I receive. I won’t deny it’s convenient, especially if I’m expecting a message from someone and can’t look at my phone, but sometimes the sheer amount of notifications stresses me out. On more than one occasion I have taken my watch off due to a group chat constantly sending me notifications.
While our ancestors struggled to send messages with pigeons and horses, we in the 2020s have the advantage of instant communication. I can send a meme to my friends with a few button presses, and they’ll get it right away. I don’t have to seek out my teachers in person to contact them, I can just send an email.
The main drawback of this, as you may have guessed by now, is that we are constantly receiving information we are expected to respond to. Better respond to your emails in a timely manner. Better check your friend’s Snapchat message before it disappears. Why haven’t you shared this post about (current issue) yet? Why haven’t you responded to your text messages yet? You looked away from your phone for two seconds and now you have twenty new Discord messages to sift through. Check your emails again!
This mentality of “I need to respond to everything” can bleed over into other things. For example — I can respond to messages and emails on my watch, though it’s a tricky process which takes lots of time and attention. If I receive an email from a teacher in class, am I obligated to respond on my watch, even if it means I miss out on several minutes of lecture? Likely not, but you can see how the pressure is there.
To examine other people’s feelings on this matter, I posted a form on the A-State student app at the beginning of the semester, and collected eight responses. A full breakdown of results can be found on the second page of this article.
The responses I gathered indicate several things. First, these students respond to emails from teachers as soon as possible, but not at the expense of other obligations. They also expect teachers to respond at roughly the same speed, though half were fine with waiting more than a day for a response. At the same time, they take more time to respond to messages from their friends, and are fine with a similar response time in return. Despite this, all but one still said they felt more obligated to respond to messages from friends than emails from teachers.
Second, there are a variety of feelings about response times. Some students stress over responding to unanswered emails or messages, while others are more relaxed while still being aware that they need to respond. Some feel terrible when they forget to respond to emails, while others are only mildly bothered. All students said they have their school email logged in on their phones, with half saying they preferred to send emails from their phones.
In the open response portion of the form, four students spoke about their response speed.
“With messages being able to be sent as fast as they can, I definitely feel like I have to answer as soon as possible,” said Christina Cook, a junior pre-veterinary major from Searcy. “Like how in a face-to-face conversation you immediately respond, I want to be able to immediately respond to a message.” Cook also said that when she waits to respond to messages, they stay in the back of her mind and stress her out.
Emelie Fincher, a senior music education major from Springdale, agreed that being able to access messages and information at any point in time makes her feel “generally uneasy,” but that her response time is dependent on the context of what messages she receives.
Rhea Boone, a freshman psychology major from North Little Rock, says that the speed of messages actually helps her stay focused on conversations. “It makes me feel like no one is very far from me at any one moment. If I need to know something, or need assistance with anything, or simply want to reach out to someone I know they are just a simple message away.”
Kelley Fiesser, a junior English major from Maynard, said that being able to access messages and information at any point in time makes her feel safer. “I know that if someone needs me, or vice versa, it won’t be hard to reach them.”
Maybe it’s best if we remember to give everyone a little understanding when they take a little more time to respond to things, even if they can respond instantly.
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Categories: Opinion
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