Completely depends on where you live AND also your social bubble. That's why these threads are often repetitive in nature. Everyone's different.

Here in NYC, I can count the number of Android users I've met in one hand... but I know that tons of people have Android phones. Most chatting happens on iMessage and maybe Instagram chat (people seem to exchange IG usernames rather than phone numbers nowadays).

I'm actually in NYC too. Definitely see tons of Androids here.

I've never seen or heard of people exchanging IG information - is that really a thing? Maybe I'm getting old.

Mainly a Gen Z thing I believe (speaking as a member of said generation). Many people my age see their phone numbers as being more private information that should be given to those you trust, so may not want to give out to someone you just met at a bar for example. Instagram can be used as a sort of barrier. Also, each party gets more insight into the others lives by checking out their Instagram account which is usually interesting information if you're establishing some sort of relationship with another

I'm actually begrudgingly graduating from asking for Instagram usernames to asking for TikTok usernames.

A lot of Gen Z (18-23) are not using their Instagram accounts, or they have so many instagram accounts that they don't check and it is a high probability that you receive their "thirst trap" account where they just collect followers to look at their body and ignore. Not necessarily to consciously ignore, but just never check the messages at all because their personal instagram with their group conversations are elsewhere.

> Many people my age see their phone numbers as being more private information that should be given to those you trust

This is a really relevant factoid against the background of the debate over Signal requiring a phone number to communicate with people. It seems the next generation is likely to look elsewhere if that continues.

In the US market it's much more dominant.

Yeah. Im us based, and have two different friend groups that i text with daily. One group all has iphones and we use imessage. The other group recently landed in signal, but has been all over the place over the years, from email, to g chat, to hangouts, then tried whats app, then back to hangouts....

Likewise. Almost all my circles (90%) are iPhone based in Australia and Singapore. All WhatsApp, Signal.

Curious. 95% of my circle are Australian, 80% of them use iPhones, and absolutely all of us use iMessage for nearly all text communication.

Signal is used for the iPhone to Android communication sometimes, but honestly it’s mostly just SMS.

Fascinating. Most of my circles are Australian, the majority have iPhones, and yet I have never seen anyone mention iMessage. Everyone I know uses Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, with Telegram and Signal being very distant third and fourths.

We must have very different circles!

imessage should still work?

> Then again, half my friends are Android users, so...

That's the reason. Same reason my friend group is all on WhatsApp. If we all had iPhones, we'd just use iMessage.

Well, another datapoint. Here in Brazil, my family and friends all use iphones but no one uses imessage. Just whatsapp.

Similar, long term iPhone user, zero messages via iMessage. For me it's 97% FB Messenger, 2% Whatsapp, 1% Line, 0.1% Google Messenger