I read Polly Hudson’s article (There was one thing I swore I’d never do on WhatsApp. And now I’ve gone and done it, 27 July) with interest, but I think blue ticks fell out of fashion for a simpler reason – they turned WhatsApp into a full-time job. In an era when so many of us are trying to reclaim a little time and attention from our screens, switching off “read” receipts gave people a small but meaningful sense of control.
Being permanently contactable is exhausting. Reading a message and replying to it are two different things, but blue ticks erased the gap between them. The moment they turned blue, an invisible countdown began. Switching them off was about reclaiming the radical idea that I can read your message now and come back to it later, because at the precise moment you texted I was probably trying to remember why I’d walked into the kitchen.
Tallis Morris
Bristol
Polly Hudson’s article describes how ramping up your privacy settings can involve switching off the blue ticks option on WhatsApp. I switched them off years ago for privacy reasons. It was too tempting to check if people had read your messages. If they had, how long did it take them to reply?
Worse still, messages not read meant you were definitely not in the cool club, which was depressing. Having blue ticks disabled on your WhatsApp means you can ping your messages out into the ether and, unless you get a reply, you have no idea who bothered to read them. Much better for your mental health and it saves a lot of time and energy.
Kim Ware
Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
