Chatting with someone you don’t know over text is hard. You somehow have to capture their interest while having no idea what they’re interested in. In person, it’s much easier to get over this initial hump as you can try a bunch of topics quickly until you find one that’s interests both of you, and get much better feedback on the form of body language.

Yes, a text chat misses a ton of non-verbal cues. A video chat could work better.