Delaying messages should be standard for all messaging platforms.
At work, I have Outlook set to delay sending my emails for one minute. This ‘hack’ has saved me countless times. Whether I forgot to attach the file, misspelled a name, or sent the email to the wrong person. The realization that I did something wrong usually smacks my brain as I click the send button or when I glance through the email that I just sent.
On my phone, I have a three second delay on all my text messages by using a 3rd party application (Pulse). This has created a habit for me to click the send button and quickly glance over what I just typed, often times finding misspellings.
On WhatsApp, when I press send — The message sends instantly. But, WhatsApp now allows for deleting messages that you didn’t mean to send or meant to and later regret. This is a step in the right direction, but not a perfect solution. A much quicker solution would be the ability to delay sending a message instead of after-the-fact deleting it. Given my reasons above, I think that most people would agree that they realize that they shouldn’t have sent the message moments after sending. So why delete instead of delay?
Another negative to the post send catastrophe is that you can only recall texts up to seven minutes after sending them. Once that limit has passed, there is no way to purge the content of that message. There is a lot that can happen in seven minutes. What if the recipient reads the notification but doesn’t open the message. It shows as unread and deleted, but the recipient has already seen the message. Simply delaying the message may save so much grief. We need to take advantage of the pros of typing our words instead of the cons of speaking them. Allowing there to be a slight delay or buffer could save a relationship, save time, or simply save from having to clarify.
When a message is deleted, the recipient is shown that a message was deleted. This alone will cause issue because the next text that’s coming is,
What did you just delete?
If there was a delay set as default, the next message would never be a,
What did you just send, realize there was a mistake, fix it, and then resend?
What about time sensitive messages?
WhatsApp already shows that the other person is typing, so if someone is waiting on a response, a 3–5 second pause shouldn’t make a big difference. If there is, maybe there could be a ‘send now’ button. It’s not like WhatsApp prides itself on a minimalistic design.
What are your thoughts on a delay button? Should all messaging platforms have a delay option?
