Would Stress Decrease if KakaoTalk Had a 'Quiet Exit' Feature?

Work Group Chat Shows '00 Has Left' Notification Causes Discomfort
Consideration of 'Quiet Exit' Feature for Regular Chats

National messenger KakaoTalk. It is essential for daily life or work, but many people complain of fatigue because work and life are not separated. In particular, group chat rooms (dantokbang) created for work purposes give the feeling of being connected to the workplace even after leaving work.

It is also a headache how to leave the dantokbangs that have been created indiscriminately. Even if you want to leave an unwanted dantokbang you were invited to, you feel uneasy about pressing the 'Leave Chat Room' button considering relationships with people.

Among office workers, there are complaints that even if they want to leave a work-related dantokbang that was created temporarily and no longer has conversations, they have to be cautious because their superiors are included.

[Photo by KakaoTalk]

Mr. Lee, a man in his 30s working in the advertising industry, said, "There are about 10 work-related dantokbangs that I don't use," adding, "I looked through them to organize, but since seniors and managers are still participating in the dantokbangs, it seems impolite to leave first."

As more users experience similar discomfort, Kakao announced plans to apply a feature that allows users to quietly leave group chats to regular chat rooms as well. Currently, when someone leaves a dantokbang, a message saying '○○○ has left' is displayed, and users remaining in the room can see who has exited.

However, Kakao has not yet disclosed the exact timing for applying the quietly leave feature. Kakao introduced the quietly leave feature in team chat rooms, which can only be created by paid service users, last December.

In the political sphere, related legislation has also been proposed. On the 22nd, Representative Kim Jeong-ho of the Democratic Party of Korea introduced a bill to amend the "Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection," which allows users to leave a dantokbang without notifying other members of the chat room.

Rep. Kim emphasized, "When a user wants to leave a chat room to stop the conversation, a message indicating the user's exit is displayed, increasing the user's discomfort," and added, "Since this feature has already been introduced in apps like WeChat (a Chinese messenger), Kakao should also introduce this feature in its free service."

Citizens welcomed the news that the quietly leave feature could be applied soon. Netizens responded, "I hope it is implemented quickly. There are several rooms I want to leave," and "It was uncomfortable that my name remained when leaving a dantokbang, so this is really good news."

However, since many still handle work through KakaoTalk in addition to private conversations, there are also criticisms that it is difficult to completely relieve fatigue. Professor Lee Dong-gwi of Yonsei University's Department of Psychology said, "In the hyper-connected era, it is difficult to completely block contact with the outside," and advised, "It is necessary to establish time free from contact and appropriate personal standards for responding to contact."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.