[sic1]

I'm over here confused about how so many people are using Whatsapp. Is this is the United States or other countries? No one I know uses Whatsapp over here.

I did however do what others are suggesting. I installed Signal, and told my close family and friends to install it to communicate with me - and to not use standard SMS anymore.

While I did get a bit of grief over it initially, we are all happily using Signal now, and more people I know are moving to it all the time.

It's also a great middle ground for iPhone and Android users to communicate.