An apparatus that intelligently determines how to alert a user to the arrival of an incoming message at a telecommunications terminal, and what information is imparted to the user via the alert, is disclosed. In the illustrative embodiments, the terminal has a processor that makes this determination based on one or more of the following: properties of the incoming message (e.g., who sent the message, a priority level associated with the message, the semantic content of the message, the length of the message, etc.), the time and date (i.e., the "calendrical time"), environmental parameters (e.g., temperature, ambient luminosity, etc.), the user's physiological parameters (e.g., blood pressure, heart rate, etc.), the location of the user, the proximity of other wireless terminals in the vicinity, whether the user is currently receiving another message, and the delivery mechanism of the other message (e.g., voice, text chat, etc.).