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Who among us has not at some point in time been shaken to their cores by the sheer sight of a read receipt?

I know I have.

The read receipts feature on iPhones — which, if enabled, notifies people when you've read their text messages — is, in my opinion, one of the most anxiety-inducing modernizations in the world of mobile phones. While some people out there, such as my dear (misguided) colleague Brenda Stolyar, are pro-read receipts, many texters feel that knowing when someone reads their messages (and vice versa) is incredibly stressful — especially when a response isn't delivered in a timely fashion.

Is the person who read my text and not responding angry with me? Are they about to ghost? Are they OK? Why haven't they read the message yet? What are they doing if not opening, reading, and replying to my very important and/or dumb, inconsequential text?

Read receipts can send people into mental spirals, but the good thing about the feature is that it's not toopopular among Gen Z and millennials. Though you may know a few younger texters who've embraced read receipts, you'll often see them pop up in texts with parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, or boomers in your life who might not be very tech-savvy.

Perhaps people using read receipts aren't even aware that the feature is on, or they simply don't know how to turn it off. If that's the case, we're here to help. Nothing kills the texting mood like seeing a read receipt, so here's how to turn them off.

Disabling read receipts for everyone

If you're ready to leave read receipts behind, unlock your iPhone and head to Settings. Scroll down on the Settings page until you find Messages, click that and take comfort in the fact that you're already more than halfway there.

Once you're in Messages scroll down and find the Send Read Receipts option. If your read receipts are enabled the toggle to the side of the words will be green. To disable read receipts for all of your contacts, all you have to do is tap that green toggle, watch it turn gray, and breathe a sigh of relief knowing you can read people's messages on your own time without anyone knowing you've done so.

Disabling read receipts for certain contacts

Though you may be done with the read receipt life entirely, another option is to keep read receipts enabled but disable the feature for certain contacts in your phone.

If there's someone in your life who has a deep hatred of read receipts, but you really reallylike the feature, then consider sparing them and changing their settings. Disabling read receipts for individual contacts is also something to keep in mind in case there's ever a reason you don'twant someone to know you've seen their text.

How do you pick and choose who receives read receipts? If you have read receipts enabled for everyone head to Messages then take the following steps:

• Click on a conversation you want read receipts disabled in

• Touch the name of your contact

• Select "info"

• Tap the toggle beside "Send Read Receipts" so it switches from green (enabled) to gray (disabled)

If you ever want to turn read requests back on for an individual contact after disabling the feature just follow these steps again. (Same goes for enabling read receipts for everyone.)

Some read receipts basics to keep in mind

Before you decide to say goodbye to read receipts here are two limitations you should know about the feature.

• Group chats don't support read receipts: This means even if you have the feature enabled your friends in a group message won't be able to see when you've read their texts in there, and vice versa.

• Read receipts don't work with SMS texts either:The feature is only enabled through iMessage chats, so if you have iMessage turned off or you're texting someone who doesn't have iMessage enabled, read receipts are a no-show. (You can tell when iMessage is enabled because text bubbles will be blue, and when they're disabled the bubbles will be green.)

Now that you have all the info you can make an informed decision on whether or not you should turn off read receipts. It's totally up to you, but also, please turn them off, you old. They're horrible.

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