Because it allows people to communicate when they're not in close physical proximity. Would you rather go out to dinner with friends and just speak to each other or sit there and type your conversation out in a WhatsApp group chat?

It's a convenience/necessity thing, pure and simple.

I said was talking about face-to-face (or 'in person' as you put it) communication. You're absolutely right that over long-distance people prefer to communicate by text, but in person people prefer to communicate by speech so that's exactly my point: there are at least some contexts in which people prefer speech.

I guess I could also follow suit and return your weird toxic/patronising insult here too since you clearly didn't understand my original comment, but perhaps it would be nicer if we didn't do that?