Why are read receipts so triggering?

The day after I turned my read receipts on, a guy I had gone on a couple of dates with texted me. "I don’t know if it was intentional, but your read receipts are on all of a sudden." His text wasn’t accusatory, but the change had certainly struck a chord. He seemed to imply that if I had turned them on, it must be a mistake. Surely no one would willingly admit to leaving people unanswered for hours on end. 

Poll a group of friends and you’ll realize: Most people hate read receipts. And yet they shape a surprising amount of our digital behavior. In a 2017 study in the Journal of Media, Cognition, and Communication, nearly half of the respondents said that read receipts made them feel either ignored (34.7 percent) or anxious while waiting for a reply (13.9 percent). Only 11.9 percent said they didn’t care. While dating, those feelings are dialed up. Participants said they were far more aware of read receipts in conversations with a romantic interest than with family, friends, or workers.

In today’s hyperconnected world, it’s already easy to assume someone sees a message within minutes. But without a read receipt, there’s plausible deniability — we can tell ourselves they just haven’t checked their phone yet. (And let’s be honest: people have been rationalizing delayed responses since the days of love letters.) The second those tiny words — Read at 3:42 PM — appear, that illusion is shattered. It’s why some people swear by them as a tool for clear communication while others see them as a fuel for anxiety. 

Read receipts have been around for a while: Apple introduced them to iMessage in 2011, and Instagram followed in 2013 with a little “seen” tag at the bottom of DMs. 

How do people feel about read receipts?

Opinions have been divided ever since. Some people leave them on as a gesture of transparency. Others immediately started gaming the system: iPhone users figured out how to hold down a text thread to preview a message without marking it read. Snapchat users half-swiped — dragging a chat halfway across the screen to peek at the message without opening it. 

Yet in recent years, our expectations around response time have escalated. “We are such an instant gratification culture with social media,” says Christina Scott, professor of social psychology and relationship researcher at Whittier College. Six years ago, waiting a day to respond was normal. But then the pandemic hit. We went from checking our phones periodically to having them become a permanent extension of our hands. Now, a work meeting is no longer a valid excuse for silence. A three-hour delay can feel unbearable. “Response time — especially for kids and young adults and people dating — is everything,” says Dr. Don Grant, media psychologist and national advisor of healthy device management at Newport Healthcare. “It's a game. People determine how they rank and what their importance is to others on how quickly people respond.” 

Grant recalls a recent session with a client who had texted a woman after a first date. “She didn’t respond to him till the next day. He was losing his mind,” he says. Her eventual response was positive — she would love to see him again — but he had spent the past 24 hours unraveling, thinking he had been ghosted. “Now, he says he doesn’t trust her,” says Grant. It raised questions like Why would she wait? What was the problem? “That's hard because so early on, it's not really socially acceptable to ask those questions,” he adds.  

Scott says that the problem arises when we attribute the behavior to a person’s character, instead of their situation (like being in a meeting or getting distracted by another task.) “We can start blaming the other person, like they're not a good person, they didn't take this seriously, which can be triggering for us,” says Scott. “Or we can flip it back on ourselves: they don't think I'm important enough, there's something wrong with me, and it triggers our own anxiety.” 

For people with anxiety, it can feel like a “tsunami of emotions”, says Scott, but anyone can be affected depending on context. If your last relationship ended due to poor communication, you may be hypersensitive to delays in a new one. “But this person that you’re just starting a conversation with doesn't know that you’re bringing in this emotional baggage,” she adds. 

Jordan, a 30-year-old bartender in New York, has experienced this from the other side. “I be getting cussed out,” he showed me as he swiped through a long chain of messages from a woman he was seeing, each one more accusatory than the last. The intensity pushed him away.  

The emotional toll of being left on read

It’s hard to stay calm when so much of our sense of self worth is tied to our digital interactions. We don’t just want to be acknowledged — we want to be prioritized. And when someone reads our message and doesn’t respond, it can feel like they’re subtly saying we don’t matter that much. That sting of perceived rejection? It hits the same dopamine and self-esteem circuits that social media was built to manipulate.

Some people know this, and lean in — weaponizing read receipts as a subtle power move to appear less interested or more in demand. “I love read receipts,” says Alice,* a single woman based in Colorado. “I want people to know I’m ignoring them on purpose. You can know I absolutely did see it but, yeah, I’m choosing to not respond.” That kind of deliberate ambiguity can make the other person chase harder, tipping the scale of who cares more.

If you’re playing that game, be careful: “We teach people how to treat us. And they teach us how to treat them,” says Grant. In other words, if you set the tone, you can’t be surprised when it’s mirrored back.

While all of this emotional upheaval is understandable, it also misses a larger truth: This is the first time in history where we’re expected to be reachable by everyone at all times — no matter our relationship. “We have collectively decided that when someone texts or messages us, it is a 911 emergency that needs to be responded to right away,” says Grant. “And usually it's not.” Sometimes, people just don’t have the bandwidth for yet another conversation. (Yes, even if they’re clearly online. Scrolling doesn’t require the same energy as engaging with someone.) 

Why do we expect an immediate reply to our texts?

“Whenever we communicate with anyone, we are selecting when it's convenient for us,” Grant adds. It’s still acceptable to pick up a call and say, “Can I call you back?”, but for some reason, that boundary hasn’t carried over to texting. While dating, we often get wrapped up in our own timeline, without considering that the other person’s headspace might not match our own. What if they’re anxious, overwhelmed, or just having a bad day? Do we really want to deal with someone’s worst moods so early on? 

Yet a new connection might assume that if you’ve read a message, you owe them a reply. It can start to feel like emotional labor you never signed up for.  For some, leaving read receipts on is a way to push back against that pressure — to say: Yes, I saw it. And I’ll respond when I’m ready. But early on, it can be hard to tell whether someone is setting boundaries or establishing control.

As we navigate the modern dating world, read receipts aren’t going anywhere. Managing our reactions to them might be the only way to stay sane. “Take a break, put your phone down, go have lunch with someone, go try to find validation somewhere else and come back,” says Scott. “Odds are they'll write back to you in a little while. It may just not be as fast as you wanted them to.” 

But also — trust your intuition. If something feels off with someone’s communication, it probably is. “Remember: you're just getting to know this person,” says Scott. “Manage your expectations and don't let anything that they do shake the foundation of who you know you are.” If someone consistently makes you feel small, you don’t need a timestamp to know it’s time to move on.

*Name changed for anonymity