Literally just call them. You don't even have to ask for permission. Cold call them. If they don't want to talk now, they won't answer. That's fine. Call again another time.
In the last year I have just started cold calling my friends and family. It's been great.
what would make chats awkward is if the topics never go beyond smalltalk. if every so often a message exchange is like: hi, how are you? how are the kids? i am fine, kids are doing well. how about you? likewise thanks. and the conversation keeps remaining at that level, then i start wondering, why are we even talking. there has got to be more.
Second, I love that you decided to reach out to that old friend because relationships come and go and it's never to late to pick up an old friendship.
As for your final point, if the idea is to call someone in order to replace the classic facebook passive stalking I think it's fine if the conversation never goes too deep. It's a way to show you care and sometimes it's all that matters. Maybe in doing that, when it's time to have deeper conversations, they'll remember that you called them and showed interest. And that's something they can't see if you just scroll their facebook page.
And I'm saying you generically, not talking about you specifically.
But I do get what you're saying, if every time you talk to someone you have shallow chats, after a while you might start wondering what's the point.
At some point Facebook crippled those features. Maybe for good reasons (I guess the possibility of stalking might be one). But in any case, I use Facebook much less now.
I've known people who have gone from on the phone all the time people to using skype to those in discord voice chats. Largely because of the costs of calling internationally as well, can't leave that out!
Although I will say, some of these platforms could learn a thing or two from the voicemail system!
Now it’s a lot easier to do a voice call and also do something else since you’re probably sitting in front of your computer. And you can stay there for hours chatting about literally nothing.
Phone calls, had to be a lot more intentional. Firstly because of the cost but also because it was harder to do something else while on the phone.
And I kinda miss that.