Confounded newfangled contraptions

Last night the wife and I had just gone to bed when her phone starts beeping; her dad had text messaged her some one sentence message. Lauren then spends a little over a minute typing a return message saying she is going to bed, and puts her phone down. About two minutes later, her dad messages her back to tell her goodnight, so Lauren spends another minute telling him goodnight. They spent over four minutes saying about five sentences. Once she received the first message, she knew her dad had his phone, so what exactly was the impediment to just calling him? Other than sending messages in class, I truly don’t see the purpose of text messaging. One of the main reasons people buy phones is to allow instant, two-way communication. Apparently it just seems cooler to attempt to type out a message on a twelve button key pad than to just talk.