You're texting someone. The conversation is great, the two of you keeping bouncing off of each other's points. And then, all of a sudden, the other person stops. Five minutes pass by.

Then ten. Then half an hour. Suddenly, it's 2019, Stranger Things Three has already come out, and you're still clutching your phone in the same spot and waiting for a response.

There is a trend in our generation which revolves around setting up so many unofficial rules and etiquette for behavior on social media. The most infuriating of which is purposefully waiting to respond to someone (usually someone you have a romantic interest in). Let me be blunt when I say: this makes no sense.

First of all, talking to someone you have a romantic interest in is not a game. Don't get me wrong, I agree that at times it feels like Mission Impossible, but people appear to have reached an extreme degree when it comes to just messaging somebody.

I know people who will get a message from someone they like, see the message, and then purposefully wait twenty minutes before responding. When they finally do reply, the other person will then wait an equal, if not a longer amount of time. And like that, the two are chasing each other in a game of "who can wait for the longest" message tag.

How are people meant to have meaningful conversations if they take thirty-minute gaps in-between? People don't take randomly long pauses in real life. Imagine you're talking to a friend and all of a sudden, they just walk away mid-thought. This is the kind of culture we allow on social media and it needs to end.

If someone is messaging you and consistently stops responding without a reason, they are not worth the time. That sounds harsh, but if someone wants to genuinely talk, then they should bluntly do so. Not adjust their response time because of the unofficial rules social media has declared.

Some people enjoy playing hard to get. Others just find it wasteful and annoying. I am clearly one of those people. We should not let this type of etiquette dictate how we choose to communicate with others.

And we shouldn't allow friends and other loved ones continue on, thinking this kind of behavior is acceptable.

The only way the world improves is through discussion. Those conversations that start off with nothing can always blossom into new ideas or life-changing revelations we could have never predicted. However, none of that happens if we can't keep a conversation going.

It's a small step, but choosing to acknowledge a person's thoughts immediately rather than putting it off, is a step in the right direction.