> I’m wondering if my experience is an outlier or if this is pretty much what everyone experiences today?

I experience very much the same issues. While I do occasionally have great conversations over IM with select few people, most are similar to what you describe, write a long letter and only receive a few sentences or less. I myself though do still prefer in person conversation, too much inflection, tones and meaning is lost in text based conversation, it is even taken the wrong way a lot as a result.