It's not because I consider calls useless, though, but because most of the time I'll notice the vibration (most environments are quiet), and I find the vibration less disturbing in most environments than a ringtone. If I don't happen to notice the vibration (could happen e.g. while walking), rather few calls are so important that they couldn't be returned later on.
Bonus points for being less disturbing in case I happen to forget to silence the phone in situations that warrant that. I of course still make it a point to make it completely silent if I go somewhere that really requires that, but in most situations vibrate-only allows for worrying less.
As for the parent post's preference for SMS. Most people I know are on XMPP (well. basically google hangouts), Telegram, Signal.. I'm not a fan of the multitude of walled gardens that the chat world has become, but SMS is pretty limiting and still not guaranteed to be free. There's 2 people I still talk with on SMS - the rest are on more featureful chat clients. I also do get a considerable amount of SMS spam, unfortunately.
Oh, also, I use google voice for my SMS 'cause my main plan does charge for SMS - I don't particularly care about this since no one I know really uses it anyway, and the few who do are easy to redirect to google voice.
It’s gotten really bad for me in the last few months. I get at least 5 spam calls per day, starting at 7:30am.
Most of the calls are from real estate companies/agents who have the wrong number and are trying to reach the owner of some property. Around 80-90% of the calls are from area codes in Texas (have no idea why, I’ve never has anything to do with that state).
The only reason it didn't happen sooner was because SMS prices were nuts ($0.20 a text at one point![1])
That all changed with the advent of data plans and non-sms messaging services. Once those two things came together there was no way for a telcom to keep charging through the nose.
With spam callers ringing off the hook now, it's no wonder why everyone just texts now-a-days. All my calls go straight to the google answering service if they are from unknown numbers. In the past year, maybe 10 of them have been legitimate (out of literally 100s!).
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/the-rising-cost-of-texting/