In our Wireless Issue, TIME examines how mobile technology is changing everything from politics to health care. But as anyone who’s young and single knows, it’s also affecting the dating game—largely because of texting. Consider this scenario, told from the female’s point of view: you had a date on Friday night and you’ve been waiting patiently for him to follow-up. Clearly the date was great. But so far life has been bleep-less, and it will soon be sleepless if something doesn’t happen. And yet what to text and how to text it is no simple matter. TIME put together a chart showing just a few possible outcomes of the post-date texting ritual—with all its dreadful silence, agony-inducing status updates and thrilling validations.
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Read TIME’s special report on how your phone is changing the world (and your life) here.
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