I wish I could say the same but if you want to date you have to here. I despise and absolutely hate how you have to you use a phone number to register. And then every contact you have can add you to a group so everyone there now can have your number.
I've had a stalker before and I hate that stuff like that makes it trivially easy for her to get my number again. I literally can't understand how women are okay with absolutely shitty systems like this.
I really can't repeat enough how much I strongly hate WhatsApp and how everyone else thinks it's so good for exactly the reason that I hate it. It's too easy to send messages despite me never giving you my number to begin with. SMS is the same but you can't add me to a group without my permission and share my number with a group of people I don't know.
Signal is centralized and requires a phone number. This is potentially impactful to your anonymity. So, for example if the recipients device is comprised that encryption doesn't mean much and you may be identifiable.
All that said, I use Signal. But it's good to know it's shortcomings.
Edit: added potentially. You could certainly have a number not associated with your identity.
anonymity, privacy, and security are not inclusive of the other and anonymity is not in scope of signal. SimpleX would be a better option if that's your goal, although being in beta still, I can't fully recommend it
If you live in most of Europe or definitely Latin America, yeah, it is so popular it's kind of inconceivable not to use it, or at least hard to imagine. I genuinely don't understand how people in the US communicate.
I've used SMS exactly 3 times in my life, all 10+ years ago. My phone plan doesn't even include SMS anymore. It boggles my mind that people use SMS in the US, and I mean that seriously.