Ever since Ray Tomlinson made email one of the hottest things in the '70s and Nokia, the once largest phone manufacturer in the world, did the same with text messaging after presenting the world's first mobile phone with a texting function - the way humans communicated evolved in mysterious yet sophisticated ways.
Although, we're pretty sure Tomlinson and others responsible for putting homing pigeons out of business would be pretty confused to see how much time, energy, and thought we put into sliding into someone's DMs.
Perhaps the greatest case in point on this is Instagram, the beloved social media app which has more than 2.3 billion active users today. Many might not remember this but when it was launched in 2010, all you could do was share photos, like and comment on them. That's it.
Everything changed, however, when in 2013 Facebook, the app's parent company, added a direct message feature. The only caveat: you couldn't start a conversation with a "Send bobs" or "Hi dear", or an all-explaining GIF. Something that only changed a few years down the line, making Instagram the lifeline for generations to come.
While it's hard to say exactly how many DMs are sent each day from apps like Instagram, the newest data gives us a ballpark number of 18.7 billion texts worldwide every day - and that's not including app-to-app messages from WhatsApp, Twitter and other social media giants. Pretty difficult to wrap our heads around that one, huh?
On the other hand, it's not so surprising, given that teens send a minimum of 50 text messages a day, according to one survey in 2010. Which means that by today's standards, this number could be as high as the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.
However, no king can rule forever. What Facebook is for the 'MTV generation', Instagram became for Gen Z'ers. According to Casey Lewis, a youth-culture consultant who authors the youth-culture newsletter After School, "They don’t want to be on it, but they feel it’s weird if they’re not.”
In a recent survey conducted by Piper Sandler, which involved 14,500 teenagers from 47 states in the US, it was revealed that barely 20% of them selected Instagram as their preferred social media platform. Considering that 75% of them admit to using Instagram as their go-to app for DMs, it's quite telling.
Of course, one of the most peculiar elements of DMing is nonetheless receiving a text without the sender's name attached. Something that the last season of Netflix's hit series You played on, not to mention the all-time classics such as You've Got Mail.
This predicament presents a dilemma: should one boldly inquire about the sender's identity, risking the embarrassment of admitting their failure to save the contact? Or should one play along, diving head-first into the thrilling mystery (which, lest we forget, may well just be your long-lost cousin)?
In either case, both scenarios present a million possibilities which are difficult to replicate outside the screens of our phones.
When executed skillfully, sliding into someone's DMs becomes a gateway to forging connections, an expedited route to intimacy in the realms of dating, friendship, or flirtation. A well-crafted and timed private message, then, can also effortlessly set the stage for meaningful interaction which can morph into a job offer - just like it happened for Natalie Zfat, a well-known social media expert.
"I was by sending a blind message on LinkedIn to the managing editor of Rolling Stones magazine. It was between 2006 and 2000, so it was very uncommon to get a message from someone you didn't know on LinkedIn at the time," she told Bored Panda in a Zoom call. A few weeks later, Zfat was on a plane boarding for New York City, where she landed an internship position at the magazine. "I do very much believe in the power of a DM because it's literally what helped launch my career."
Of course, when handled poorly, private text trespasses upon personal boundaries, violating the sacred space of the DM inbox. Which can eventually backfire, just as words do in real-life. "They say, 'Dance like no one's watching, email and text like it could be read in a deposition.' The same is true for DMs - you don't want to send anything that would be considered inappropriate or stalker-y," Zfat explained.
Then there's an unwritten rule in the realm of social media: thou shall stick to one platform unless explicitly invited. Nobody enjoys the experience of being subjected to relentless "social media stalking" across various accounts, right? As Zfat argued, "For someone you don't personally know you're reaching out to for the first time, you don't wanna ask a question on TikTok and then LinkedIn, and then Instagram - like for any other reason in life." In other words: that might come off creepy and weird, and we don't want that, do we?
"If you want someone to respond to you, you need to keep it contained and easy to organize, and easy to keep track of," she suggested, "don't have like three conversations about the same topic in different places, especially with someone you don't know." And that includes 'Tindstagramming,' the creepy dating act where someone who was just rejected on a dating app tries to slide into that same person's DMs for a second chance. Yuck.