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.
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.
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.