Please leave unread your WhatsApp messages…or not?

 These days we need to remember the basics of education and communications. It is certain that times have change and it will continue on this path, even faster every day…but there’s some things cannot be removed from society, because it will cause their own destruction. Sounds really deep for such a basic topic like WhatsApp check mark. Why you haven’t reply to me? Did you see my message I sent to you last night? Why you didn’t call me back? It was urgent, why you didn’t reply? Those are basic conversation starters these days after you see a person (finally) face to face or in a phone call conversation. It is true people have different motives for not actually answering or replying to a message from a friend or coworker, some because we want to, some are just because you missed it or you just didn’t have anything good to answer. Whatever is the reason, these days we don’t care much about reasons, we just want to know the answer to that question. It’s like we have transformed our communications ways from human to human.

In the past, when there was not messaging, even before that when there was no phone, when it was only letters, people needed to wait weeks, even months to receive a reply from a letter. I think that’s why the topics and the purpose when you wrote were more special, you took more care on what you were writing because if you missed, you might need to wait other month (s) to get a reply or answer or simply for your message to your love ones to get received.

Then we took that into the extreme. Some people tend to think that, same as when have a face to face conversation, where you tell someone a simple “Hello man, what it’s been up?” of course the other guy, would reply after 5-10 seconds at most. Some people think the instant messaging is the same scenario, when actually, even when we see the information of the person as “online” we should not expect to get an answer right away. The person has, on its own right, to answer when they understand they should. Of course, if it’s your wife doing that, expect to have some questions later on if you face that Online, receive message, and not reply situation…if you know what I mean.

 In general, we could say that an educated conversation involves several elements:

·         Listen actively to the other person's viewpoints and ideas: give them your full attention, showing empathy, and asking thoughtful questions to clarify their perspective. This one directly cause situations in our days because very few people are just paying attention to WhatsApp only, for example, you have Instagram, you have Facebook, etc.…you tend to navigate between all them and this “full attention” it’s just one of the conversations.

·         Express your own thoughts and opinions clearly and respectfully: being open to new information and willing to adjust your views based on evidence and rational arguments. This “informal” communications tools now are used even at the workspace with our coworkers or even to deliver to our customers. We need to try our best to write down the rightest way as possible, as it we were writing to this person on an email and try to lower or totally remove our tendency of sending too many icons, memes, etc. during our conversation. This slowly start deteriorating our ways to communicate thru formal ways like email or document. It starts becoming part of our normal behavior.
 
·         If there’s any disagreement, it's important to engage in constructive dialogue and avoid personal attacks or disrespectful language. Also, very hard to attain taking into consideration that message communication tends to be with no “feeling” because part of the communication is that you can see the other person reaction and none verbal words and you can adapt depending on their response. As soon as you feel it starts getting unclear if what you are saying it’s been delivered the right away, best is to change AT LEAST to voice note, if not make a direct phone call or greater is, it’s possible to wait, to discuss the topic face to face to avoid misunderstandings.
 
In summary I would say, let’s go back to past in some things, let’s get back to having face to face communications, let’s make phone calls to our love’s ones, not just leave it to the messages, MEME and icons to express and communicate. I am sure that it will improve your life greatly, not only because it will because you will spend less time in front at phone screen, but also you will be using your time for greater things than scrolling into your Instagram page, while you wait for the reply of that “very important message”.