In today’s time, texting has increasingly become the main way of communication, which is strange considering that there’s no tone, facial expression, emotional cues, or body language involved. I guess its increase in usage is due to its convenience. We can all agree that texting is much less frightening than calling or FaceTiming someone. Personally, I prefer calling someone rather than texting, since it just leads to less misinterpretation and gives you a better feel of what they are actually trying to say.
But, because texting has dominated all other forms of online communication, it raises the question: What causes us to read texts the way we do? Do we just interpret messages the way we want to, based on what we want to hear? And how does that affect the way that we respond, feel, or even stress ourselves out?
Texting patterns
With this new up-and-coming generation, it’s safe to say that texting has become the new norm — it’s quick, easy, and much less intimidating than other forms of communication. With that being said, many people have developed their own way of texting, through their tone, punctuation, and even their response times.
Some people refrain from using emojis, others use lots of punctuation, many like to keep things short, and some even take long periods of time to respond. Overall, these small details may seem unimportant, but they actually shape the way we interpret messages. Of course, all these factors are affected by the context of the situation.
For example, if someone usually replies quickly but suddenly they take quite a bit of time to reply, then that can only make you assume one of two things: they’re either really busy or they just don’t want to talk to you. Honestly, I always choose to believe the worst, that they don’t want to talk to me, because it seems like if they did, they would find time to reply despite their busy schedules.
All this to say, it’s easy to read someone’s texting patterns once you have already been texting for a while. These patterns suddenly become a point of reference. So, when something changes, it stands out, and that’s usually when our brains start to fill in possible explanations. And as you begin to decipher these patterns, you also learn much more about them and about yourself as the receiver.
what does this say about us?
Interestingly, these explanations can also reveal much about ourselves. For example, choosing to believe that someone is busy when not replying as quickly as you would like them to can tell us that you seek the good in people and have an overall positive mindset when it comes to communicating with people. If you are assuming that someone is ignoring you, then this may be rooted in poor past experiences.
All these emotions are mainly caused by the way you’re thinking and what you want to hear, rather than the actual tone that someone might be sending. We tend to read messages and imagine how they would sound if the person were saying them out loud.
Typically, if we were in a good mood, a short reply may be received as normal, while if we were already stressed out, then that same message may be read as rude or distant. It’s genuinely hard to understand what someone is trying to convey in their messages, so this is why it’s up to us to interpret what they are trying to say. This ultimately leads us to read and understand what we want to understand.
Without facial expressions or the tone of someone’s voice, it can be left up to our brain to fill in those blanks to understand what the messenger is trying to say. This idea is supported by Dr. Melissa Ritter in her article for PsychologyToday, which states that people “read the messages with distinct tone and inflection to dramatize what they know to be the voice with which the note was composed — one of self-centeredness or contempt or disregard or disinterest or directive. No doubt, their interpretations are often accurate. But the only thing I can access with any certainty is what my patient assumes and feels.” Dr. Ritter does a great job of explaining how our emotions affect the way we interpret messages.
In other words, the reader often assigns emotional tones to messages when none are obvious. The article also explains how these interpretations are often actually accurate, which also shows that we’re good at deciphering messages — once we have the proper cues.
Overthinking
When it’s left to us to “fill in the blanks,” it can also be pretty easy to start overanalyzing small details, which can cause us to overthink. We begin asking ourselves, “Why did they use a certain word? Why did they take forever to respond? Why did they respond that way?”
While these questions are valid, there are questions that cause us to overthink the situation — which I believe ultimately creates unnecessary stress. When we start asking ourselves these questions, it shows that we care, but can it also reveal that we care too much? Answering these questions with positive excuses can sometimes mean we’re trying to protect our feelings or simply just giving the sender the benefit of the doubt.
So, now that we’ve received a message and interpreted it, it’s time to reply (the most difficult part, I fear). If the message we interpret seems to be friendly or cordial, then we can respond with something within that range, AKA “matching their energy”. But if they don’t reply similarly to the vibe that you provided, this could lead to more assumptions and overthinking.
Final takeaway
Our emotions and past experiences all shape how we read and respond to messages. I believe that it’s important to remember that the way we read messages is a reflection of us more than anything else. With this new information, I wouldn’t be surprised if you start overanalyzing every little text you may get, because I know I will.