Read Receipts: Friend or Foe?

In this day and age, there are a billion and one ways to send someone a message through a computer or phone.  Between iMessage, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, GroupMe, Twitter, LinkedIn messaging, etc, it is pretty simple to send out a message to someone, no matter whether they are a complete stranger or your best friend.  The golden question now has become, will they respond?

Read receipts, which is how you can tell if your message has been opened, are the best way for you to  answer that question.  Let's say you are interested in a job and sent a message on LinkedIn to a recruiter.  If you go back a week later and see the message was read, then it is safe to assume you won't be getting a response.  While this is very helpful to know for you as the messenger, it will definitely hurt the recipient's reputation in your mind.  Now imagine you are the recruiter. Your inbox is constantly flooded with messages from hopeful college students, and you just filled your last position seeking students.  Is it worth your time to respond with a "no" to each and every one of them? Most likely not.

On a professional platform like LinkedIn, read receipts are normally seen as more helpful than anything because the messages should be about business and shouldn't be taken personally.  Though, even on LinkedIn, you have the option of whether or not to send and receive read receipts.  In fact, most messaging services give you that option.  That being said, one very important and personal platform is notably missing that option.  That platform is Facebook Messaging.

Everyone either loves or hates read receipts for their own personal reasons, but why is it that Facebook of all platforms has no option to turn them off? There is no official answer to that question, but in my opinion, Facebook keeps them on to encourage conversation.  Let's face it, you are much more likely to respond to a message if you know that the sender can see if you've opened it, especially if the message is from someone you could run into at a later point in time.  However, the guilt of having to respond has led many people to just simply never open the messages.  People are just reading the preview they get on their phones, and if they don't think they will respond, they just leave it unopened for an extended period of time or even forever.  In a way, I think it is noble of Facebook to not give the option to turn the read receipts off because it encourages more honest communication.  Though, how honest is too honest? That is for you to judge.