15-07-2025
This 1 iPhone Setting Might Be Messing With Your Friendships
You just had another terrible interaction with your annoying co-worker, so you pour out your soul to your bestie via a long, emoji-riddled text.
You hit send.
You wait for those reassuring three dots to start bubbling up.
But they never come. Strange, considering your iMessage app confirmed your friend 'read' your message more than two hours ago. What gives? Did you do something wrong? Is your pal angry at you? Before you know it, you're emotionally spiraling, casting doubt on your years-long friendship. And it was all caused by a single modern communication feature: the read receipt.
This pesky technological advancement may allow us to know the exact moment our friends see our texts or direct messages, but thanks to society's growing need for instant gratification — brought on by our ever-present phones — read receipts have the potential to cause more harm than good.
Unless we reevaluate our expectations.
'Read receipts aren't secretly ruining your friendships — your unspoken expectations about instant replies are,' observes visibility strategist Patrice Williams-Lindo, the CEO of Career Nomad, a career coaching service. 'We've normalized a 24/7 availability culture that confuses responsiveness with care, when in reality, healthy friendships allow space for people to respond on their own time without guilt. If you're using read receipts to track your worth to someone, it's worth pausing to check whether you're seeking reassurance or connection.'
While read receipts can be a useful communication tool, it's important to establish your own communication needs and boundaries early on. It's on you to determine if you would benefit more from leaving read receipts on or turning them off. (Either choice is fine!) 'Our reactions to social behavior, including text communication, will be based on our expectations,' said Morgan Cope, assistant professor of psychology at Centre College and an expert on interpersonal relationships.
According to the experts HuffPost interviewed, it's not so much read receipts that threaten our friendships, but the unrealistic communication expectations — or 'text-pectations' — we set for ourselves.
Living in the digital age, it's easy to forget that only a few decades ago, our main forms of communication were landline telephones and letters. The shift to instantaneous connection has been nothing short of revolutionary. As a result, our social interaction expectations have been fraught with growing pains.
But who's to say that people didn't experience the same kind of social anxiety in the late 19th century when the telephone was introduced? '[Telephones] blew up expectations of social interactions as they integrated into government and professional spaces, and eventually people's homes,' Cope said.
'In the past, when people wrote letters and waited days or even weeks for a reply, there was often still anxiety, but there was also more room to manage expectations,' said licensed marriage and family therapist Saba Harouni Lurie, the owner and founder of Take Root Therapy. 'People understood that delays were part of the process and not necessarily personal. Now, because we carry our phones with us everywhere, all the time, it creates the illusion that we are always available and should always be responsive.'
The downside to having the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time means that 'we've normalized hyperavailability,' Williams-Lindo said. That means we've unwittingly begun 'confusing constant responsiveness with love, loyalty, and friendship quality.'
Sure, it's great if you're in New York and can immediately reach out to a friend 3,000 miles away in Seattle. But at the same time, 'the instant messaging era encourages a dopamine-driven cycle of quick replies, making people feel obligated to drop everything,' continues Williams-Lindo. 'It erodes healthy boundaries, conditioning us to feel guilty for taking time to think, rest, or live offline.'
For centuries, we had no way of knowing when our loved ones received our correspondence. Letters arrived when they arrived, and if someone wasn't home when we called, we left a message and hoped for a timely call back.
Now that we can see the exact second our texts were read, it's easy for our minds to take over and create a narrative that isn't based in reality: 'OMG, Bridget saw my text at 11:04 a.m. and it's now 3:14 p.m. She must hate me.'
But it's far more likely that Bridget got caught up in something else than suddenly decided you're not special anymore. 'They might be in the middle of something, distracted, or simply not ready to respond,' said Harouni Lurie. 'But because we are trying to connect, that silence can easily feel personal, even when it is not.'
'Read receipts can trigger a rejection spiral because many people equate 'seen but no reply' with 'I'm not important,'' said Williams-Lindo. 'It taps into our fear of being ignored or abandoned, even if the delay has nothing to do with us. Our brains crave closure, and read receipts can feel like an unresolved cliffhanger, making us interpret neutral pauses as personal slights.'
Technology may influence every area of communication now, but that doesn't mean humans don't need — and thrive on — IRL reactions.
'Our emotional expectations are still rooted in face-to-face communication,' Harouni Lurie said. 'When we are talking to someone in person, we usually get immediate feedback, including eye contact, nods and verbal responses. So when we send a message and see that it has been read, it can feel like we have reached out and been left hanging.'
Since no one deserves to be 'left hanging,' there are ways to avoid the dreaded unanswered — but still read! — text. This begins by having open conversations with our friends about our text-pectations.
'That might mean sharing how often we tend to check texts, how quickly we usually respond, or whether we sometimes need space before replying,' Harouni Lurie said. 'It can also be helpful to name how it feels when a friend does not respond right away.'
Ellie, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym to preserve her anonymity, made a point of having these conversations with her friends, and now they have a system in place to ensure no one is 'left hanging.'
'[My friends and I] mutually agreed to turn on read receipts,' Ellie told HuffPost. '[This was] largely out of care for each other and wanting to make sure we were supportive during hard times.' In the case of one particular friend, whom we'll refer to as J, Ellie even has a specific time frame in which to follow up if one of them isn't emotionally available to respond: 'For example, J messages me and I respond, and if she reads my response but doesn't message me back in 12 hours, I follow up with a heart emoji that serves as a reminder of support.'
'When both people are willing to be honest and compassionate, those conversations can actually strengthen the friendship,' Harouni Lurie said. 'Clear expectations and mutual understanding help prevent assumptions and reduce the emotional weight we might place on response time.'
Regardless of our instant-gratification culture, setting healthier digital expectations in your friendships is just a good practice.
More importantly, managing these expectations can go a long way toward normalizing that we aren't (and shouldn't be) immediately available to our friends 24/7.
Here are some strategies for both you and your friend circles, courtesy of Williams-Lindo:
Name the norm: Let friends know you value them, but you may read and respond later to give them your full attention.
Create 'slow messaging' zones: Intentionally respond after you've rested or finished your day's priorities.
Lead by example: Take your time replying and reassure friends it's normal, modeling a healthier digital pace.
Turn off read receipts if they create anxiety: Do it for yourself and others, to remove performative urgency.
Using read receipts can be beneficial for your friendships. What needs to change isn't whether you use them, but how you respond to them.
'Read receipts can become a tool for trust rather than tension,' Williams-Lindo said. 'They can help normalize, 'I saw your message, and I'll get back to you when I can,' rather than, 'I must drop everything immediately.''
Harouni Lurie echoes this sentiment, suggesting that 'leaving texts on 'read' can actually be a healthy way to show that someone is not always available but has still received the message.'
'That is, in fact, the purpose of the feature: not to guarantee an immediate response, but to let others know that their message has been received,' Harouni Lurie added.
We might do wonders for our friendships if we shift our text-pectations toward a better understanding of why read receipts were created in the first place — to make communication easier.
'Remember that technology is supposed to help us communicate,' Cope said, 'and communication should (on the whole) make us feel good.' If that's not happening — and your methods of communicating are 'leading to negative mind and body responses' — then it might be time to reassess your personal communication expectations, she noted.
You didn't become friends with someone because you liked their texting style. So instead of getting upset when they don't text you back ASAP, showing a little patience and compassion can go a long way.
After all, Harouni Lurie said, 'friendships are built on understanding, not on how fast someone answers their phone.'
