Pagers are still used in some industries, like healthcare, where people can die if a message doesn’t get through. Pagers are still more reliable than text messages and cell phones in many locations and especially inside large buildings like hospitals. Though the industry is switching.
I never said that they weren't, yeah?
I suggested it being a difficult alternative because of the wide-spread use of cell phones. For example, in my country, the national paging system was taken down in August of 2011; so, there's no consumer paging services. B2B (which hospitals would be inclusive of) still exist, to be sure, but that means nothing in the overall scheme of a consumer trying to not buy a cell phone.
"Why one of cybersecurity’s thought leaders [Dan Geer] uses a pager instead of a smart phone"
I'd say that the number is relatively small to non-existent but that might have more to do with the fact that cell phones are more a requirement for day-to-day life than anything else.
For example, try to sign-up for paging services, as a means to replace your cellphone with a passive-only device, and see how far you can actually get with that idea.
Or try to buy a CRT-TV.[0]
At some point you have to concede that means to go against society's trends are no longer there, unless you make them yourself - and most people either don't have the resources nor the time or a combinations of either to do that.
[0] - https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=lp_560864_nr_p_n_feature_thre...