Smartphones have changed the way we live throughout the past several years, and many people do not even remember what it is like to live without them. One of the most popular smartphones is the iPhone. The iPhone is known to be one of the most user-friendly phones out there, and it also is known for having really interesting features; one being read receipts. For those of you who do not know, read receipts are when you send someone a text message and whenever they read it, the time they read it comes up on your phone right below the message. It is basically so you can know exactly what is going on on the other end of the phone, because we need to be connected 24/7, apparently. While this may seem like a smart invention, it actually ends up making people a bit crazy, and here is why:

Read receipts are in fact a great invention, if you want to either a) be very on top of your texting game b) want to make everyone you know mad or c) literally do not care about anything. When you have your read receipts on and do not intend to make anyone mad, it can either go one of two ways: you could just open the text when you see it and answer it in a timely manner, or you could avoid it and just never open it and have eighty-seven unread texts on your phone because you just want to avoid all your problems. Obviously this is one of the huge issues with read receipts as many people are avoidant and just ignore text messages, and regardless of it they opened the message or did not open the message.

However, sometimes, read receipts are there for your benefit. For example, this guy you met at a party a few days ago is being a total creep, so you turn on your read receipts so he knows he is being ignored. Or your friend is complaining about something you have already talked about for a while, so you turn your read receipts on so she knows that you really aren’t into talking about how what’s his name is ignoring you again. There are many other potential ways for you to use read receipts successfully, but those are just a couple specific ones.

The real question is what is the right way to do it? To have read receipts or no read receipts?

The answer really is up to you individually. I have an iPhone, and I have personality put a lot of thought into this topic for some reason, and I have realized that for me personally, I do not enjoy read receipts on either end. I do not like the pressure of keeping mine on because I do not want to accidentally upset anyone by “ignoring them,” but I also do not enjoy when others have them because it sucks when you know you are being ignored.

Overall, I think that the main issue I have with read receipts is that it somewhat promotes avoiding your problems, because you can just never open a message and never have to answer that person or question you were avoiding. No one likes to be ignored, and sometimes avoiding things just makes everything worse, so keep that in mind before you open your messages.