“What are you doing?” I asked my 19-year-old god-daughter whose nose was buried in her smartphone.

She has an iPhone 4 and its screen is cracked and she complains about how slow it is. She’s looking forward to the new iPhone 5s she’s getting from her father as a reward for doing well in her first semester.

“Chatting,” she says.

And she’s group-chatting not just on one channel but across several social networks at the same time.

Most of her friends are on What’sapp. She’s trying to set up a group on WeChat but there’s a girlfriend who says it’s too Chinese, so she doesn’t want anything to do with it. There’s a group on Line but again, the same girl thinks it’s too Japanese. Then there’s Snapchat which seems to be taking up more of her time than Instagram.

But the most universal chatline that she and her friends are on is Twitter and it is there they organize their meet-ups.

I am amazed at the amount of time they spend chatting just to organize a meet-up for the day. At least 100 messages can go to and fro before a collective decision is reached as to where to meet and when. That’s a lot of texting and I do worry about the fate of her fingers.

“Why don’t you just be the one to decide, say where to meet and when,” I asked her.

“That’s no fun,” she said.

“Or why don’t you just call each other and decide with one phone call?” I persisted.

“No one calls these days,” she said.

And I guess with telco providers, who are seeing their revenue streams dwindle because of these instant messaging apps, charging for phone calls, people will talk even less. In Singapore, telcos such as M1 and Starhub have adopted a one-minute minimum charge for outgoing local voice and video calls on per-second billing plans.

I don’t think it’s only 19-year-olds who don’t talk these days, I find that I am getting fewer and fewer phone calls and the only ones I get seem to be from someone trying to sell me something – usually offering me money I don’t have – despite me having been registered on Singapore’s DNC list.

Other than being a threat to telco providers, these instant chat apps must be also worrying the folks at Facebook. Yes, it has its Messenger but it’s not the same, and it’s not the first chat service people think of. At least not me.

My god-daughter tells me she’s spending less and less time on Facebook and I’m not surprised with the amount of time she spends on those chat apps – because young or old, the one thing we have in common is the amount of time we have a day.

The new algorithms introduced by Facebook which filters your news feeds according to those people you interact the most is also not endearing the network to many people.

Said someone active on the network, “Can you imagine, Facebook showing me only who they “think” are close friends to me? And not showing me other friends at all? Just because I have no FB interaction with them, but what they don’t know is that we have real interaction in real life hence no need for Facebook posts to connect …”

The new algorithms are also upsetting small businesses who’ve seen their reach trickle to almost nothing, because obviously Facebook now wants to be paid for reach. And too bad if you’ve already spent money to build your fan base, you now have to spend extra to reach those fans. This article tells it well.

Certainly we’ve seen this happen on our own Facebook page – engagement has trickled down to 100-plus – and we’ll have to work harder in every way to expand our reach. Either that, or use other social networks.

One thing’s for sure – there is no lack of choice out there. I now have so many chat apps plus I have two smartphones and two phablets that I fear I’m not going to have any time at all to do anything else this year but chat and chat without really saying anything at all.

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