my texts to people without iPhones will not go through

Hi there.

Try going into Settings >> Messages >> and scroll down to "Send as SMS" and "MMS Messaging" (make sure both are on to be able to send non-iMessages). You can also view this Support link to troubleshoot: If you can't send or receive messages on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

Let me know if this solves your problem or not.

I don’t care what has happened in the past. Text messages are 100% managed by your carrier, and if they don’t work only the carrier can fix it. The carrier may have a local outage, or someone could have screwed up the settings on your account, but either way only the carrier can fix it.

I’m assuming your phone is not in Airplane mode, and that you have at least one bar of signal and you have cellular data turned on; SMS uses the voice channel, and MMS requires cellular data (it cannot use Wi-Fi).

cecec wrote:

my settings are fine btw

There are no settings on your phone that can turn SMS on or off. Only your carrier can do that. Pretty much the only thing you can do to stop SMS from working on your end is, as Lawrence said, to put the phone in Airplane mode. Contact your carrier.

Texts to non-iPhones use SMS for text and MMS for images messaging. Those are carrier services, so if they don’t work you need to contact your carrier.

You can check up on your carrier here→Down Detector - outages

I see that Verizon has scattered outages over a wide area.