Why “seen” instead of “saw”

grammarverbs

In instagram, when someone see the message, there's a little indicator "seen" that tells you that the person you are chatting with has seen your message. My question is why it is "seen" written instead of "saw" in place of indicator? Because saw is a simple past verb and seen is past participle used with have/has, and cannot be used idependently, right?

Best Answer

The only immediate subject available in a tag like "seen" is the message to which it is applied, and so the descriptor "seen" is really just the interesting part of the passive voice sentence "This message has been seen". It describes what has happened to the message.

To apply "saw" (active voice) would shift the focus to the reader of the message (the subject) rather than the message itself. But Instagram evidently thinks we are interested in the state of the message in this context, not the reader(s) of it. The list of readers is sometimes given as a list of passive agents, "Seen by ...".

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