My teenage kids see Email as "old people letters", which are only helpful for resetting your Fortnite or Pinterest password and not much more. Similarly, I now see IRC as "old people chat", while fully getting that I am a member of the "old people" group.

I used IRC between 1999 and now, but I only spend a little time on it because all the active communities are elsewhere. Partly because I don't have a super robust IRC client, I can use it from anywhere, including mobile. I have "The Lounge" (a free software web client for IRC) running at home, but over time, I've become less inclined to open it.

Work stuff is on Slack, and many open-source and old people reliving their youth in retro computing communities are on Discord. The hardcore Free Software people seem to all be on Matrix. All three of these platforms are crap for different reasons. I'm in exactly one group on Signal because that was dictated by someone else. I'm not too fond of that either. I'm in WhatsApp chats with many non-nerds (and family). Some people use Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat groups, but those people were mostly born in a different century to me.

Personally, these days, I spend more time talking to friends/associates/like-minded people (who aren't work colleagues or in topic-specific chats) on Telegram. There are a few nerdy podcast-related channels and some group chats I'm in there. I'm sure people find Telegram terribad, too. 

Essentially, none of the options are amazing. For me, Telegram is the least worst, and Discord is the worst, with Matrix, Signal, and IRC lumped in the "meh" department. I have them all open all the time on every machine, with notifications off, and dip in as and when I have time or the inclination. 

I was quite pleased to see Andy badgered into joining Telegram, tbh, as I now see his ramblings, which I missed from the Bitfolk IRC channel I never looked at. <3

/2p