Sorry for the late reply: Response times and reciprocity in WhatsApp and Instagram chats

TL;DR

This study analyzes response times and reciprocity in WhatsApp and Instagram chats, revealing that response speed balance is a stable marker of social reciprocity over time.

Contribution

It introduces response time balance as a novel, quantifiable marker of reciprocity in online communication, bridging social interaction principles with digital messaging.

Findings

70% of WhatsApp and 44% of Instagram messages answered within five minutes

Response speed between chat partners is similar and stable over months

Response time balance can serve as a marker of social reciprocity

Abstract

Chat communication is often fast-paced, creating the expectation of quick replies. While the timing of exchanges is known to foster closeness and enjoyment, it remains largely unexplored whether chat partners with strong ties reciprocate each other's response times. Using 3.4 million messages from 889 chats across 97 donations of anonymous WhatsApp and Instagram chats, we analyzed response times, their balance between chat partners, and its stability over time. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine response speed as an expression of reciprocity, bridging a key aspect of online communication with a fundamental principle of social interactions. We found that around 70% of WhatsApp and 44% of Instagram messages were answered within five minutes, confirming the fast pace of instant messaging. Overall, the response speed between chat partners was similar. The response speed similarity was evident both in the overall response-time distributions of chat partners assessed with Jensen-Shannon distance and in the steep regression slopes (0.786 for WhatsApp and 0.796 for Instagram) linking one person's probability of responding within five minutes to the partner's corresponding probability. Importantly, the dispersion of response time similarity over months showed that this balance persists over time. Our results position response time balance as a marker of reciprocity in computer-mediated communication, offering a new way to quantitatively study this fundamental principle of social interaction. We suggest using response speed balance as a complementary metric in the analysis of relationship dynamics, such as the strengthening or weakening of social ties.