If I don't back out of the text, I have to pan all the way back to the bottom. Some text streams are super long, and this is extremely annoying and takes extra time. It did not used to do this. I cannot find a setting to fix it.
Hmm... Check the message's time, is it correct? Try checking phone's time if it's in correct time zone. Try using this app named SMS Time Fix (link). I used this before and fixes the problem.
Let me know how it goes.