My brothers text messages can read like fragments of an ancient code: hru, wyd, plztruncated, cryptic, and never quite satisfying to receive. Ill often find myself second-guessing whether gr8 means actual excitement or whether its a perfunctory nod.
This oddity has nagged at me for years, so I eventually embarked upon a series of studies with fellow researchers Sam Maglio and Yiran Zhang. I wanted to know whether these clipped missives might undermine genuine dialogue, exploring the unspoken signals behind digital shorthand.
As we gathered data, surveyed people and set up experiments, it became clear that those tiny shortcutssometimes hailed as a hallmark of efficient communicationundermine relationships instead of simplifying them.
Short words lead to feeling shortchanged
Most people type ty and brb (for thank you and be right back) without batting an eye.
In a survey we conducted of 150 American texters ages 18 to 65, 90.1% reported regularly using abbreviations in their daily messages, and 84.2% believed these shortcuts had either a positive effect or no meaningful impact on how the messages were perceived by the recipients.
But our findings suggest that the mere inclusion of abbreviations, although seemingly benign, start feeling like a brush-off. In other words, whenever a texter chops words down to their bare consonants, recipients sense a lack of effort, which causes them to disengage.
Its a subtle but pervasive phenomenon that most people dont intuit.
We started with controlled lab tests, presenting 1,170 participants ages 15 to 80 with one of two near-identical text exchanges: one set sprinkled with abbreviations, the other fully spelled out. In every single scenario, participants rated the abbreviating sender as less sincere and far less worthy of a reply.
The deeper we dug, the more consistent the pattern became.
Whether people were reading messages about weekend plans or major life events, the presence of truncated words and phrases such as plz, sry, or idk for please, sorry, or I dont know made the recipients feel shortchanged.
The phenomenon didnt stop with strangers. In more experiments, we tested whether closeness changed the dynamic. If youre texting a dear friend or a romantic partner, can you abbreviate to your hearts content?
Evidently not. Even people imagining themselves chatting with a longtime buddy reported feeling a little put off by half-spelled words, and that sense of disappointment chipped away at how authentic the interaction felt.
From Discord to dating apps
Still, we had nagging doubts: Might this just be some artificial lab effect?
We wondered whether real people on real platforms might behave differently. So we took our questions to Discord, a vibrant online social community where people chat about everything from anime to politics. More importantly, Discord is filled with younger people who use abbreviations like its second nature.
We messaged random users asking them to recommend TV shows to watch. One set of messages fully spelled out our inquiry; the other set was filled with abbreviations. True to our lab results, fewer people responded to the abbreviated ask. Even among digital nativesyouthful, tech-savvy users who are well versed in the casual parlance of text messaginga text plastered with shortcuts still felt undercooked.
If a few missing letters can sour casual chats, what happens when love enters the equation? After all, texting has become a cornerstone of modern romance, from coy flirtations to soul-baring confessions. Could plz call me inadvertently jeopardize a budding connection? Or does u up? hint at more apathy than affection? These questions guided our next foray, as we set out to discover whether the swift efficiency of abbreviations might actually short-circuit the delicate dance of courtship and intimacy.
Our leap into the realm of romance culminated on Valentines Day with an online speed dating experiment.
We paired participants for timed dates inside a private messaging portal, and offered half of them small incentives to pepper their replies with abbreviations such as ty instead of thank you.
When it came time to exchange contact information, the daters receiving abbreviation-heavy notes were notably more reluctant, citing a lack of effort from the other party. Perhaps the most eye-opening evidence came from a separate study running a deep analysis of hundreds of thousands of Tinder conversations. The data showed that messages stuffed with abbreviations such as u and rly scored fewer overall responses and short-circuited conversations.
Its the thought that counts
We want to be clear: Were not campaigning to ban lol. Our research suggests that a few scattered abbreviations dont necessarily torpedo a friendship. Nor does every one of the many messages sent to many people every day warrant the full spelling-out treatment. Dont care about coming across as sincere? Dont need the recipient to respond? Then by all means, abbreviate away.
Instead, its the overall reliance on condensed phrases that consistently lowers our impression of the senders sincerity. When we type plz a dozen times in a conversation, we risk broadcasting that the other person isnt worth the extra letters. The effect may be subtle in a single exchange. But over time, it accumulates.
If your ultimate goal is to nurture a deeper connection, be it with a friend, a sibling, or a prospective date, taking an extra second to type thanks might be a wise investment.
Abbreviations began as a clever workaround for clunky flip phones, with its keypad texting (recall tapping 5 three times to type the letter L) and strict monthly character limits. Yet here we are, long past those days, still trafficking in omg and brb, as though necessity never ended.
After all of those studies, Ive circled back to my brothers texts with fresh eyes. Ive since shared with him our findings about how those tiny shortcuts can come across as half-hearted or indifferent. He still fires off brb in half his texts, and Ill probably never see him type Im sorry in full. But somethings shifting: He typed thank you a few times, even threw in a surprisingly heartfelt hope youre well the other day.
Its a modest shift, but maybe thats the point. Sometimes, just a few more letters can let someone know they really matter.
David Fang is a PhD student in marketing at Stanford University.
Sam Maglio, an associate professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Toronto, contributed to the writing of this article.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
