I've had the joy of trying to explain to my elderly dad why his text message history is lost because he chose Signal as the default sms system, didn't make a backup, didn't sync that backup to the cloud or manually copy it to the new phone, and didn't write down the very long decryption code.

The usability issues for non-tech people have been getting less and less in the past years which is keeping my hopes up.

I've never owned a cell phone nor ever had a social media account in my life. Sure, it gets me the occasional eye roll but trust me, my social life is just fine.

Caveat: old person speaking.

When everyone was using SMSes to chat, how did the kid that did not have a phone felt? And people were social before phones existes too.

I think that being outside of the main mean of communication is going to have an impact on your social life, independently of what the medium is

There you have it. Class of 1950 uses letters to organize itself. Class of 2000 uses e-mail. Class of 2010 uses Facebook. Class of 2020 uses Tiktok or idk snapchat.

And this issue isn't just about your class, it also includes any peer group of any kind. For me as a 20s something, the choice is quite binary.

Nowadays you can't even participate in free software communities without using proprietary services. Many free software projects have discords instead of community run matrix or IRC instances.

Hey, I might be old, but I still live nowadays too!

In other words: even though cell phones and social media were around when I was younger, they didn't play the central role they do today, so presumably it was much easier for me to do without them and still have a normal social life than it would be today.

Here's a sad thought experiment though: if you can only remain an active part of your circle of friends if you use the same technology as they do, what does that say about the depth of that friendship?

If people won’t go to the trouble of using an alternate way of getting in touch with you then they’re not really your friends.

Then there are also many organizations/companies that use Whatsapp to set appointments, for chat support, etc.

In many EU countries Whatsapp is pretty much replaced SMS. Only a small minority of folks have Signal or Telegram. iMessage is probably the only other thing that shows as a blip on the radar, but only a portion of the population has iDevices.

I agree that this is a bad situation, but WhatsApp became popular when it was still independent and their profit model was charging 1 Euro per year (which was much cheaper than SMS). Now abandoning Whatsapp is difficult due to network effects.

If people won’t go to the trouble of using your preferred method of getting in touch with you then you don't have enough social clout.

They’re for aggregate metrics and attention collecting on the part of the company.

I do not have a Facebook empire, Twitter, TikTok or other social media presence.

I email academics I can’t visit.

I group text friends and family to make plans, and use the calendar built into my phone to remind myself of those events.

The reality is that WhatsApp is a requirement for social life. Any solution that doesn't start from that point lacks any practicality.

I get social inertia is a thing.

Somehow I’ve blown it off and life still works.

Summarizing it as “life begins and ends with WhatsApp” seems just as ridiculous to me.

Acquiesce and nothing changes.

Turn and face the strange.

If you are already well connected with your peers and friends and your social life doesn't depend on finding and exploring via the "social apps" sure you have the freedom to disconnect virtually and still remain connected socially.

If you're not in one of those countries, then I don't think you can speak for what a social life there is.

If I tell people they can only contact me via snail mail or in person (i.e. not have a phone at all), would you find it surprising that I will have a lot less of a social life?

Even 15 years ago I knew people in countries who had a difficult social life because they refused to use SMS - this was before the era of smart phones.

> HTTPs works with email, email works over data networks.

A lot of younger folks do not use email except for signing up for stuff and official work. When I left university a decade ago, many incoming freshmen were quite upset at the requirement to use email.

You can always have some social life, but in certain locales and circles, whether you use these apps or not will affect what type of social life you'll have.

> Acquiesce and nothing changes.

Sorry, but these types of statements are usually of little value, and only sound good. I could easily write:

Resist and nothing changes.

And it will likely be as true (and similarly lacking in entropy) as yours.

All my family members live in a different country and there is no good medium for communication than whatsapp.

Spike on iOS is a client that wraps email in a chat like UI if the people are free to chat real time. Not sure if it’s on Android.

There a numerous video chat sites not connected to Zoom, or FB properties

whereby, etc

I gave my family an ultimatum and being the tech savvy one they jumped to Signal

Social inertia is a thing conceptually, but it’s not gravity. It can be bent any which way

Not all families respond well to ultimatums.

While that is true, what you have not accurately determined is why that value is low, and how much of that is your doing vs theirs.

Make it happen.

Be the change you want to see.