Comment by 2cb
4 years ago
It is similar in the UK as well regarding WhatsApp. Not quite to the extreme you describe, but WhatsApp has 100% replaced SMS. No one uses SMS. It is all WhatsApp. People don't talk about texting they say "I'll WhatsApp you." If you join a new social circle, whether it's personal or professional, the first thing is to be added to the WhatsApp group.
The only thing I'll say about the security aspect though is the on-by-default cloud backups make the E2EE a red herring. Even if you turn it off on your own phone, it is almost certain the person you are talking to has it on. And if you turn it off it nags you to turn it back on after each update, most users will just do it to make the nagging go away, and FB know that.
My family lives mostly in the UK. None of them use Whatsapp. They still use SMS for random messaging, and they use Telegram for coordinated messaging. They range in age from 30 to 78. WhatsApp might be dominant, but "No one uses SMS" is almost certainly an overstatement.
Some people, especially those who have more international contacts, will prefer to use Telegram over WhatsApp sure. It is rare to find anyone under the age of 60 who uses SMS as their primary method of communication in 2021 though. The number of SMS messages sent in the UK has dropped by over 100 billion in the past slightly-under-a-decade.[1]
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/271561/number-of-sent-sm...
The page you linked says there were 48.68 billion SMS in 2020. Averaged across the population, that's on the order of 800-900 messages per person per year. Even if the actual SMS usage demographics skews older (quite likely), it's still likely that most people send at least one text per day, maybe more.
Given that the original claim was that "no-one uses SMS anymore", I think that's still demonstrably false. Your milder claim - "rare to find anyone under 60 who uses SMS as their primary messaging system" - seems likely to be true.
People sent 50 million SMS messages in the UK in 2020, your social group isn’t the same as everyone.
You missed out some vital context from the source of that statistic:
> The number of outgoing SMS and MMS messages sent in the United Kingdom (UK) fell to 48.68 billion in 2020, from a peak of 150.83 billion in 2012.
> The fall in the number of SMS and MMS messages sent over mobile networks in the UK, coincides with a surge in popularity of apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Globally, WhatsApp added 1.3 billion monthly active users from April 2013 to December 2017, replacing the need for sending SMS messages for many users.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/271561/number-of-sent-sm...
Trust me, yeah someone's grandparents who don't own smartphones might use SMS, but the vast majority of the population does not. The stats are right there.
Also note that number of SMS messages sent is not the same as number of people using SMS as a form of communication. Most texts are sent by bots either for legit things like 2FA codes or less legit things like phishing.
We’re talking 2 texts per person, someone is sending a lot and junk isn’t enough to hit those numbers. Also, 2 factor identification is still usage.
Now it might not on top by number of messages even if it’s close, but that’s a different question. If you’re going to pick one and only one service to use then texting makes you reachable by the widest possible audience demonstrating it’s still #1 by adoption.