The time was 2:17 AM and the ellipsis came. My ex was replying, and after two glasses of wine alongside a late night scrolling through photos, I impulsively sent a message. It contained three innocent dots, which for seven painful minutes added suspended animation, waiting for a response. Those seven minutes forced me to traverse the mental rollercoaster of hope, embarrassment, panic, dread, existential crisis, and more. To my bewilderment, when I was about to experience the emotional breakdown which felt like whiplash, the three dots vanished. A storm of conflicting feelings belted me as each second went by.
And it all began with three animated dots.
The seemingly innocent feature that shows when someone is composing a message: the typing indicator ‘turns off’ for me after this scenario. In such a simple moment, an explosion of untapped emotions are forced into my psyche. In ways we have not yet fully grasped, blipping animations on the screen eventuated the evolution of communication as we know it. Those throbbing and pulsing animations capture unprecedented phenomena of someone’s thought going in realtime before they’ve shared it with you.
Ponder that for a second. For thousands of years, human interactions – spanning from caves to letters and phone calls – only revealed fully baked thoughts. There was no need to prehistorically imagine someone drawing a cute little buffalo, only to erase it, start again, reconsider, and ultimately walk away with plenty of half-drawn images they would never complete. Well, in modern times, that is what typing indicators show using technology – the beautiful, messy, unformed period where someone is trying to capitulate (or give up) on a pass metaphor.
This is one beast I can claim to have helped fashion. While working for [REDACTED TECH COMPANY], I was part of the team that included typing indicators on our messaging app. The thinking behind implementing those features wasn’t malicious, so they set out to eliminate the “I’m here” text messages and duplicate messages. “This is going to be just like real life,” we would roll in the expectal meetings, “you see when people curb-speak.” In what can stand as pretty much all I accentuated, they only tried to simplify matters, but instead doomed not just the layering for layout, but the entire communications ecosystem.
The typing indicators’ dots come with a far larger psychological impact than the technical simplicity they possess. Their evolution has given rise to restless and erythematous reactions; we would make Pavlov commendable. Yet, what is troubling is how indicators appear to our brains. Queries regarding the indicators immediate flush the mind. “Are They Serious?” “Are They Writing Something Important?” “Why Did The Indicator Stop?” “Did The Participant Delete The Text?” “WHY DID THE PARTICIPANTS DELETE THE MESSAGE?”
As Rachel describes her Wolverine-style watching of typing indicators in a semi-textual fight between her and her partner – “psychology torture.” She said, “He would do periods of two minutes worth of typing, only to stop. Type. Start again.” She was recounting a headgame to imagine messages of breakuo speeches. To commit “By the Time His Actual Message Arrived,” “Leaving Me Drained Emotionally,” “I’m So Hurt” Without Apparent Impact. Texting T/Us Asking what Time The “Dinner” meeting.
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I am witnessing different forms of comportmental shifts to this digital panopticon. My colleague Tom, for example, ensures he types the important messages he plans to send on his notes app first before pasting them on the messaging application. This way, he avoids showing off a prolonged period of typing time. My sister Clara purposely pauses in the middle of a text so that she can create indicator breaks, thus making it impossible for the senders to know how long she has actually been forming messages. A friend from college, Derek, now preemptively takes steps to streamline his work flow by disconnecting from the internet to compose difficult messages, only re-establishing connection to press send.
These are not the thoughts of emotionally stable people having an easy conversation. These are defensive mechanisms for existing within uninterrupted surveillance.
As for the power imbalance formed by asymmetric awareness, it is telling that I can see you’re typing, but I have no way of knowing what you see from me. Did you see me as I typed and deleted four different responses to settle on “Sounds good?” I will never know. This allows people to construct communication hierarchies where one person has a different reality where they are more comfortable exposing their thought process, while the other, who uses a controlled narrative has a more curated version of their thought process during presentation.
The most typing indicator’s damaging effect might be creating an expectation of uninterrupted participation in engagements. During, “I see you’re typing,” I am Societal Bonded to staying in the conversation but not participating as you have to do the next action. Grab a water glass for example, and yes, there is a possibility of context being lost for my response. “The typing indicator effectively shackles” all participants to their devices until the conversation is tied up.
My daughter and I recently had this delay situation together. While a ‘movie date’ with my wife, we texted discussing our daughter’s collages. As I mulled over which text bubble to respond to, my line of sight seemingly glued to a pop-up advising me nothing new was being typed, I found myself deficit on screen stimuli. For sustained periods, I was physically on the couch while mentally off screen. Through the sideways thinking my spouse, half inquiring half annoyed with my movie watching habits deadpan demanded what was happening on screen, my lack of answer was a hamster wheel zero sum problem, I was free floating sans anchor staring in the blank screen that needed visual stimuli pumped into it.
Tension produced by typing indicators seems to heighten alongside the significance of the relationship. Those three dots can signify vastly different meanings depending on whether it is your boss, romantic partner, or a delivery app letting you know they are typing a message about your missing fries.
Professional performance anxiety is also a thing. Romance comes with its own set of anxieties: emotional rawness. In the online dating scenario, they impose a strange evaluative stress—with the participants painfully knowing that messages are being crafted and scrutinized prior to even hitting send.
With online dating comes the most typing indicator anxiety. A friend recently told me that he had to abandon what seemed to be a promising conversation because of how her match’s back-and-forth typing made him feel “bad vibes” regarding her communication style—all this before a single message had been sent. Another suffered the unique form of grief watching someone type for what felt like an eternity following a date invitation, only to deliver a blunt “I can’t.” Those long pauses between texts told her more than the two-word rejection; they suggested the person was reluctant, thoughtful, and then decisive.
The emotional force of typing indicators is heightened due to their animation. It isn’t only because we know that someone is typing; the ellipsis is literally bouncing, pulsating, or blinking, drawing our attention like a soothing centerpiece of anxiety. The animation works like a visual metronome that marks the impatient or dreaded excitement building in the user. The more extended it is sustained for, the more importance we give to whatever message can be expected to come.
Then, there is the odd emptiness when indicators of typing have taken place with no message to follow. The delay leaves us stranded in a limp state of conversation. Did they decide against sharing their thoughts? Were they interrupted? Did they switch to another conversation? The nonexistence holds for us a perfect gap to our self-doubt.
Like with numerous aspects of technology and digital communication, typing indicators create a form of a generational gap in expectations. Each group perceives these indicators differently, older users often find them invasive while younger users truly appreciate their existence. My father, who only embraced messaging applications during the last year of his seventies, was quite shocked when I showed him the feature as he put it, “so you see when I’m starting to say something.”
Now that I think about it, he had a rather fair argument. There is something exceptionally disturbing about spying on a person’s decision making process free of the end product. A better analogy is watching someone draft an essay and progressively make additions to it to expecting to see layers of a dress being painted on top of each other or someone preparing to paint it on a canvas. It is sensitive, vulnerable, and exposed.
So what is the ideal method to restore some blocking device on boundaries to assert some personal space and emotional autonomy from the pressure of talking to indicators? While some platforms do provide certain permissions, these do come within restrictions to either turn them all off or all on. Setting more intricate controls however, would be exceedingly helpful and provide the option to turn them off during sensitive topics.
Awareness is the first step toward emotional freedom. Acknowledging that typing indicators are but a sign of process and not an outcome can help ease their psychological burdens. “The dots,” in this instance, signify that a person is engaged and nothing further. Any more meaning attached is a projection.
I have personally found it helpful to physically place my phone down whenever I notice a user is typing and might take longer to respond. This action is enough to quiet the animation’s hypnotic grip and stops me from entertaining endless what-if scenarios.
We are most empowered when we assist one another in reframing the anxieties these features stir up as taboo. “Those typing dots were making me nervous” is a perfectly reasonable thing to share, especially during discreet conversations. Most importantly, we are unencumbered in framing the anxieties these features stir up as taboo.
For all the psychological intricacies typing indicators imply, they can actually be beneficial. They bring attention where it is needed in formal settings, enriching connection in informal ones. The challenge is not the dots, but our unexamined relationship to them.
So the next time someone leaves you drowning in concern as you wait for messages from three blinking dots, keep in mind: they’re indicating participation, not a judgment of your humanity. And if you still find yourself analogously trapped, there is the ultimate measure. Face down your mobile until the sms notification appears, with the three dot guess-the-number puzzle completed.
Just don’t hold me responsible when you turn it face up 17 seconds after receiving the notification. In the end, I am the one who created the paradox.
