to think you don't text people when you'd expect them to be asleep?

[bibbitybobbityyhat]

I have terrible insomnia and have been awake since 3am . I was actually just drifting back to sleep at 5am when I received a text from a friend!! So that's me woken up for the day. I can't think why you would do that?

apologies if this has been mentioned before, only just seen this, but you may have geopathic sensitivity which could add to insomnia. I understand wanting the security of a phone near you if the land line is downstairs, but it is better not to have a mobile near you when you sleep, or at least have it on flight mode if you need it for an alarm. I have just (finally) started leaving my phone downstairs and telling myself what time I want to wake before I got to sleep and find myself waking when I need, in a better frame of mind. Also my sleep quality is better, possibly also because I'm not being stimulated by a screen as I check x, y and z just before turning out the lights. As I say, sorry if someone's already raised these points. Insomnia is horrible, there's a reason they use sleep deprivation as an instrument of torture.

I would never ever leave my phone switched on at night. In an emergency people would ring my landline. If I didn't have a landline but was worried about potential emergencies (I'm not), I would turn text alerts off (who would text in a real emergency? You'd ring.).
Since it is very obvious from this thread that there is very far from being a consensus on whether late-night texting is acceptable or not, it would seem like cutting off your nose to spite your face to say "Why the hell should I disable text alerts!" tbh.

The indignant "Why should she turn her text alert sound off?" posts are so silly.

Why should she? Because it would stop her being woken by texts of course! It doesn't even matter who "should" or "shouldn't" do what - if you don't like being disturbed by texts you have it in your power to avoid it.

The moral high ground is a weary place at 3am

(I expect, but then my mobile is on a different floor when I sleep, it's a house rule that there are no screens in the bedrooms as they are not conducive to good quality sleep).

The "It's my right to leave text alerts on and everybody else's responsibility to know that I exercise the right not to turn text alerts off and to know when I don't want to be disturbed by the text alert sounds I have chosen not to turn off at times I don't want to be alerted to texts" argument is still ignoring the existence of delayed texts.

Living very rurally in an area with patchy mobile coverage I'd say 1/10 of the texts I receive arrive an hour or several hours after they are sent.

How mobiles affect sleep even if you aren't using them sleep.org/articles/ways-technology-affects-sleep/

I agree 5moreminutes.

What is more likely to cause better sleep? Raging and fuming about someone doing something that you consider rude but they don't? Or to simply use the simple facility to avoid the situation in the first place.

It's like some people want to be woken up so they can rail against the world and how society has gone to the dogs.

It's a problem with an oh so simple solution but I guess that would spoil the professionally offendeds' fun

I agree with 5moreminutes about delayed texts.

While the vast majority arrive promptly, many of them don't, and I don't live that rurally.

I recall that with one of the phones I had previously, I actually bothered to read the small print, and texts were only guaranteed to arrive within 72 hours. Technolgy is better these days, but I don't believe any network guarantees instant delivery.

So if you don't want to be disturbed turn your alerts off or switch to do not disturb.

I think probably friends are best knowing their friends.

I will send one of my friends a message at 02.00hrs saying 'guess what, I've just seen a gig happening at..... You up for it'. I'll get one back at 05.30 when she gets up and I'll read it at 10.00hrs when I get up.
No problem.

I guess I wouldn't send one to mum and dad at that time because they are natural born panic-ers and would get twitchy.

If a mate is sending you one. At time it doesn't suit mention it. Problem solved.

"The indignant "Why should she turn her text alert sound off?" posts are so silly.

Why should she? Because it would stop her being woken by texts of course! It doesn't even matter who "should" or "shouldn't" do what - if you don't like being disturbed by texts you have it in your power to avoid it"

This ^^

I think some people just like to be martyrs to their phones.

I said this upthread and I will repeat ad nauseam if necessary

You can't police all people or organisations who want to text/email you during unsociable hours

so it is your responsibility to switch the volume off on your phone for notifications. What is so difficult about this?

I get kindle alerts during the night from Amazon, so I switch the notifications alerts volume off at night time. Simple.

If you want or need to be contactable 24/7 you will have to put up with the occasional texts/emails that you don't want. You can't have it both ways.

"so it is your responsibility to switch the volume off on your phone for notifications. What is so difficult about this?"

The difficult thing is having to remember all the time. I don't know if I have some kind of brain defect or something, but I really can't remember to change my settings every evening and every morning. I have my phone on silent during the week and on 'noise' during the weekend. Any change to this and I risk having my mobile make a noise at work and getting into trouble.

"You can't police all people or organisations who want to text/email you during unsociable hours"

No organisation has ever texted me at a stupid time. Only one or two stupid people and I can decide whether I choose to continue to be in contact with those people.

"I get kindle alerts during the night from Amazon"

Irrelevant - we're talking about text messages.

one or two stupid people and I can decide whether I choose to continue to be in contact with those people
What a snooty statement. It made me laugh though! The alternative could be to say to those people ' 'mate, seriously, those post midnight texts are no good for me, can you not send them'

I have mine in my bedroom on 'Do not disturb' mode between 11 and 6.30. Anyone who rings more than once calls come through as do calls from VIPs, (close family and friends) but texts etc do not come through until dnd mode automatically switches off when my alarm goes off.

A bit like Alorsmum - I will text friends and some family at any time where they are either recharging their phone overnight and not likely to be wakened or have Do Not Disturb enabled.

So while I'd generally send any time I am awake (and I am usually up all night), I do assume a mobile owner generally switches off or has do not disturb to protect them from unwanted calls/noises.

However, am about to start texting 250-500 small business owners a day so will definitely confine those to 0800-1800, just on the basis I don't want to annoy by disturbing family time, and have no knowledge whether some work "on call" so have a noise enabled but will normally be charging a hefty fee for overnight calls...

(and no, business to business texts are not classed as spam, so no fine, and these will be one time only, before anyone thinks I am likely to get into trouble!)

I wouldn't expect non urgent contact between, say, 10pm and 7am, on my phone either.

Does your mobile bleep when there's a new e-mail for you?

Some (well, plenty, actually) sites send out messages at night, partly because the user load is low (just like MN, there are generally fewer people online from 0200-0600 than from 1800-2200), though I note MN tends to send out daytime until late afternoon, presumably by choice (which is fine in UK, where majority might be reading, but may be 0300 in Australasia, for example.

I get daily e-mail from several services, including those overseas. They send out when convenient to them, because recipients have the option of not having such messages disturb when not convenient.

Heck, even MoneySavingExpert web site sends out throughout the night to millions of recipients, because every recipient is in control of their own computer/ device and whether it makes a noise, vibrates, or does nothing at any time is up to the recipient, and them alone.

I don't see how you can expect senders to be either mind readers or network trouble shooters (sometimes e-mail and texts are delayed by hours and even days),

I don't believe any network guarantees instant delivery.

They don't, because they can't.

If you make a phone call and the phone signal is too weak for either party, or there are network problems, the phone call won't connect and is unsuccessful. This is because it is synchronous, i.e. has to happen at the same time.

If you send a text, as long as the sender has enough signal to make a weak connection, it will send the text. If the sender doesn't have enough connection it will either fail or say it will try again later. Once it's left the sender's phone, instant delivery still can't be guaranteed - there could be problems on the sender's network, or the receiver's network, or the receiver''s phone could be off or have a certain weak signal. They can't guarantee delivery, because they don't control all the elements involved in sending and receiving. Vodafone could send a text out, but they can't deliver it if the recover is on O2 and their network has gone down or because the receiver's phone is off.

The sender side will keep trying to deliver until it's succeeded, but after the first attempts right after sending, it'll try with longer gaps. I'm not sure off-hand at what point it decides to give up and say it failed - probably 12 or 24 hours or something. But until it has failed, it will keep trying, so you might get a text at 3am.

If late night texts disturb you, by all means tell your contacts who do it - but you need to recognise that it's not always down to the sender, so the bit you can control is blocking repeat offenders, and putting your text alerts on silent with the various methods available on different phones, or even turning your phone off overnight. If you think you can't make texts silent, then you can either learn how to do it or get a new handset which can or take the risk that it's going to happen sometimes, and it might not always be the fault of a human. But you cannot blame others for your own lack of understanding of the technology and how to use it to make sure you're only disturbed when it suits you. If I don't want to be disturbed, my phone is silent or off completely (except when I'm on-call, when I don't want to be disturbed, but accept it might happen.) If you can't do that, like many other things in life, you have to accept a compromise which means accepting you might sometimes get a text at anti-social hours, as well as a possible emergency call.

Wow, people get really angry about this! 😀 I don't text people in the middle of the night but it doesnt bother me if someone does as my text alerts are silent at night. Where we live the reception is shite so I can send a text and the recipient doesn't get it for hours (text report shows me when its received).

I'd forgotten about this but this thread has reminded me. A few years ago I sent my friend a text at 3.00pm on a Thursday afternoon saying ring me when you get this. She rang me at 4.00am on Sunday morning in a panic. The text had only just got through! I had completely forgotten about the text and what ever the issue was at the time had been resolved so I wondered what the heck she was on about!

I'm not angry, just bemused. It's not a case if deliberately leaving my notifications on so I can get offended, not at all, it just doesn't occur to me to switch it all off. Fwiw I've found out that I've had my phone on silent for the past few days as I'd forgotten to take it off after a meeting , that's how little I care use it, I had maybe two missed calls and no texts waiting for me. The one person who actually needed to contact me used my land line. We are all a bit old fashioned I suppose, with a light sprinkling of luddite.

Emails are permanently set to silent, as is fb messenger etc. Some days I check once or twice to see if there's anything there, some days not at all. I didn't realise I was in so much of a minority.

Gwen while you're busy shaking your head at "stupid people" perhaps you'd like to look at your phone settings and see that you can set up your phone to silence notifications at between certain times in advance so you don't even have to remember to do it yourself and save yourself the grief of being contacted by stupid people when it's not convenient. I realise that will spoil all the fun of being outraged by their stupidity but might be worth considering

You can't police when people try and contact you, but you can police when you want to be contacted

This is a fair point, and this thread has lots of information about how to filter out inconsiderate twats with no filter of their own. That's a reasonable response, but it doesn't alter the fact that those people are behaving like inconsiderate twats with no filter.

OP, given that basic thoughtfulness seems to be an inconvenience to a lot of people, I'd do what most of us have and set up your phone to filter out the unsociable texts. And then judge the senders

"perhaps you'd like to look at your phone settings and see that you can set up your phone to silence notifications at between certain times in advance so you don't even have to remember to do it "

I don't think my phone has this option. I have a smart phone, but a very cheap one. Plenty of people still use normal mobile phones.

"The alternative could be to say to those people ' 'mate, seriously, those post midnight texts are no good for me, can you not send them'"

I've already done that of course. The person who last did it was drunk I think.

"but it doesn't alter the fact that those people are behaving like inconsiderate twats with no filter."

True, but as has been pointed out many times, some texts may have been sent hours earlier or they may have been sent out by large organisations who text en mass in the middle of the night when it is quieter. So you need to be able to deal with these as well.