Seeking feedback from the court of public opinion: Is a late night text acceptable in the wee hours? The land-line (curly wired handset type) telephone protocol or rule of thumb I previously used was: No personal/home phone calls after 9 or 10pm. Email requires no such restriction (by almost unanimous agreement). Ive found a split verdict on texts. Some believe text is only for waking daylight hours. Other people believe a text is acceptable at any time day or night (with the recipient having thee ability to silence any such potential intrusions when desired). The issue about late-night texting has reared its ugly head in my life again. This time it was to a friend who I am certain has not been on a consistent, continuing, clearly defined typical wake in the day, asleep at night pattern. ---------------- Details: There was face to face, then Facebook and text interaction until about 3pm. I received no response to a question at 3:08pm. I sent another text request for feedback at 10:18 pm. Then I sent the following text at 1:12 am: How were you doing today? Im worried now that I upset you.. I awoke to a text indicating that it is inappropriate to text at 1am. I sent the text at 1am because I was honestly concerned about the well-being of the recipient and our relationship. My intent was that the recipient wouldnt even realize there was a text until they awoke in the morning. ----------------- Im not try to bash, debate, or get a ruling on this particular instance. I accept that I made several mistakes, culminating in an undesired text. I hope to apologize for those mistakes if given the opportunity. I am still torn about whether or not I should consider it acceptable for me to text a friend or acquaintance in the wee hours. My current view is that I can treat texts as I would email. Some people may have their phone set to give an audible alert during the night. The capability is there to either enable or disable (mute, silence, or permanently remove) audible alerts for both text and email. I am taking the approach that each person is responsible for managing their audible alerts in which ever manner suits them during the night. The prior time I ran into this issue, I made some comments on Facebook, seeking feedback. The consensus seemed to me, to be, that sending a late night text is acceptable (in general), whereas a phone call might not be. Moreover, if someone wishes not to receive late night texts, it is their responsibility to publicize that info and/or use smartphone features to silence texts. Back then, I decided that it was generally acceptable for me to text anyone at any hour, unless I received an explicit request to avoid late night texts. Please provide me with some feedback and guidance here.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 20:29:09 +0000
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