Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and others are experiencing worldwide outages

Skype. Before some of my older family started using Facebook, their primary communication was Skype. It's pretty simple to use if all you want is a simple text chat and video calls. I had the app on my phone til recently.

Yeah I've been having issues with getting old people to move to Discord for a board game clan I have been in for years. Our forum engagement was low, so we thought that a Discord would improve things for tournaments and such. All the younger people moved. Many of the older ones find it too scary. LMAO.

First thing, jump into discord and use it.
Or Signal or or or ... it give so much possibilities.
After that you can explain it easily to them.

Discord:
You can make a server (for free) -you can make there channels as example one for chatting, one for animal pics and a talk channel.
Or you create a group chat and invite then all of them into it. So each one can write there or can talk or send pictures, whatever.

What you don't get are friends from friends recommendations, that someone can view into your private stuff (because your profile don't have much^^), millions of groups or games that want your attention.
Of course you can find discord servers for "all" but you need to search for it.

In the end result that in much lesser constant pressure and not the "you need to do" feeling (if you don't want).

Besides the huge privacy advantages.

They use FB ... so they know how to log into a site and type.
Other sites do and need the same.

Discord need a bit more as first setting but that can be done from the kids if they live near their parents.

Trust me i know from what i talk, i brought my family from FB/WA (partly) to discord.
And my parents are horrible with computer stuff and the know which button must be smashed to get me crazy :-D It would be better my parents never use something with a computer or a mobile phone..... but that isn't a option nowadays

And yes, privacy is not so a big thing for a part of my family, they come then around with "i have nothing to hide" and don't want to see the risks and the bad stuff with it.

I can't argue about the simplicity of WA because i never used WA by myself and will never use WA.
Before i would do that i would chat/communicate online with none -of them-. That isn't a joke, i done that when all used WA in the past -for years-.

WA is a abomination and it give for me NO reason to use it if you are able to install and use something else.
As written above alone that WA copy all from your mobile phone (pictures, videos, phone numbers, written stuff etc.) to servers in the USA (with low privacy standards) without that you sent/want to send that stuff to someone is a absolute NO GO.
That include of course all infos about all persons that you saved in your mobile phone.
The tracking stuff and personal adds are the smallest stuff.

A very easy example how WA and FB share data (against their words they don't...).
A ex girlfriend from me used both, were in a lot of clans and on WA she don't know the real names of a lot of that people in the clans.
After a short period she got friends recommended where she known the Avatars from that WA groups (Clans). It was easy to see where FB had that infos from.
So she known then all details about that people that were accessible for "strangers".
In the most cases that included the complete names, a town/village, which school they visited, which job they have (and often where exactly), their friendlist and and and.

FB not only collect what you write with people, they collect which ones are friends of you, where pictures were made that you upload, which persons are on the picture, track them and you, save your pictures and after you deleted them, they aren't gone (a friend got deleted pictures years later back when they brought up the new feature "timeline" [and that would be impossible if they would really delete them...]), after you logged out of facebook they still track which sites you browsing in your browser, how long you are there, what you click etc., first a restart of the browser end that behavior.

And in the end, i don't care if discord or a other communication die then in 5 years. None can say that FB, WA or Instagram exists in 5 years in the form you know it now.
Of course are the chance higher that it exists in some form because they have much more money as the smaller companies but they don't made that money because they are so "good guys".

Much money lead to corruption.....

Come to the light side young padawan ;-)

You can try Telegram.