Nobody wants to pay a stone mason to put brick on the exterior of their homes. They used timber for a long time, but now all the new houses I’ve seen use the metal studs, which sounds great on paper until you realize it’s basically sheet metal stamped into a U kind of shape that’s the same size as a 2x4. It’s enough to hold up the drywall and maybe some pictures/paintings on the wall plus the occasional wall-mounted TV, but give it a couple hundred pounds of weight and it’s going to crumple into itself like aluminum foil.
Honestly, most of the strength in the wall is now because of the drywall. The “studs” just keep them from falling over.
Not saying timber was all that much better, but it could at least support someone standing on the top plate of a wall without folding in on itself.
Can I get my house built from concrete board instead?