It strongly depends on what state of life you are currently at. If you are a 20 something individual and have to build a new life in a new city, being out of the "social apps" gives you next to no opportunities to build social connections.

If you are already well connected with your peers and friends and your social life doesn't depend on finding and exploring via the "social apps" sure you have the freedom to disconnect virtually and still remain connected socially.

> Somehow I’ve blown it off and life still works.

If you're not in one of those countries, then I don't think you can speak for what a social life there is.

If I tell people they can only contact me via snail mail or in person (i.e. not have a phone at all), would you find it surprising that I will have a lot less of a social life?

Even 15 years ago I knew people in countries who had a difficult social life because they refused to use SMS - this was before the era of smart phones.

> HTTPs works with email, email works over data networks.

A lot of younger folks do not use email except for signing up for stuff and official work. When I left university a decade ago, many incoming freshmen were quite upset at the requirement to use email.

You can always have some social life, but in certain locales and circles, whether you use these apps or not will affect what type of social life you'll have.

> Acquiesce and nothing changes.

Sorry, but these types of statements are usually of little value, and only sound good. I could easily write:

Resist and nothing changes.

And it will likely be as true (and similarly lacking in entropy) as yours.

Everybody has different scenarios. How many of your friend/family members can reach out to you using phone.

All my family members live in a different country and there is no good medium for communication than whatsapp.

Or realize the overwhelming majority have no interest in limiting their communication and social network due to "privacy concerns", and already have both a Facebook and Whatsapp account that are connected and sharing data. You can do this if you want, but don't preach it as if most people should care.

Most people in the UK use WhatsApp .. the fact that we have WhatsApp groups means Facebook can make this ultimatum with fairly good confidence we'll stomach it.