You may or may not have stumbled across my comment on a post from a few days ago, mentioning how I fake banned my account on WhatsApp (attached below) when in reality I just deleted it.
Well, it worked like a charm. I got my close friends and my significant other to switch to Signal, I told them we have no choice since I got banned and won’t get my account back, and told them that Signal was developed by the same people who once worked at WhatsApp before Facebook bought them. And it worked.
Just for your information, I am a zoomer in the US, the group which is probably the hardest to do this with, yet I did it (although granted we all used Whatsapp before which is also not very common in the US especially among zoomers who love Snapchat and Instagram DMs)
You are in a lucky position that your parents only use Signal. I had to resort to the same strat of “if you don’t use signal, you won’t be able to talk to me” but this did not work when it came to extended family or friends.
Not a big loss then. People who won’t accommodate you on something that’s important to you, are not worth it.