Telegraph Online – 09 September 2014 – High pressure texting – the tyranny of iPhone ellipsis

Dr Richard Graham, a psychologist specialising in technology addiction at Nightingale hospital, says that being able to follow when our texts are read is tantamount to technological “surveillance” and creates peer pressure to respond to phone updates immediately.

The stress started several years ago, he says, when BlackBerry messaging first introduced the feature. And the pressure means that many feel they’re no longer able to let their phone run out of battery or leave messages unanswered for an evening.

But the weight of expectations is nothing compared to the agony of those left waiting for a response. “There’s the terrible feeling that the person is ignoring you,” says Dr Graham. “From subjective experience, if I don’t get an email response in a day, I can find that very difficult. Are they busy, are they ill, are they away? Young people have to manage feeling excluded by people that are very important to them and it becomes very complex to navigate all those different possibilities.”

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