For me it’s family and friends wich refuse to switch from whatsapp to signal for example

Fuck WhatsApp. All my homies use Signal.

Sadly all my homies still use WhatsApp. So it’s though for me to switch.

Maybe it’s because I don’t talk to that many people for it to seem significant, but is there an issue with just sending someone a standard text message?

Those are not private at all, whatsapp, as a protocol (so basically xmpp) is pretty good using E2E. Facebook/Meta collects your metadata, but not the messages.