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As a teen in high school: People don't use iMessages, or for that matter SMS. We use Discord, Instagram DMs, etc. for communication. I don't know any of my frie

As a teen in high school: People don't use iMessages, or for that matter SMS. We use Discord, Instagram DMs, etc. for communication. I don't know any of my friends' phone numbers and have never cared to ask, because we use Discord voice channels instead. This article seems to be of the "kids these days" type, and is, in my experience, highly reflective of the millenial generation, who are by and large not teens anymore.

marcan_42 5y ago
I'm a millennial and we don't use texts in most of the world either. Sticking to SMS and SMS-adjacent stuff like iMessage seems to be a fairly uniquely American thing. The last time I had an SMS conversation was... May 2020. And before that it was October 2019. Everything else is verification/notification SMSes. In Europe you'll find people using WhatsApp or Telegram; in Japan and Taiwan, LINE is king, and of course in China there's WeChat. There's also Twitter DMs. Discord has been becoming increasingly popular lately, especially among the tech/game and adjacent crowds. Nobody has used SMSes by default for years.
- Talanes 5y ago
  Do Americans even really "stick" to SMS? I know millennials who might use iMessage as their primary channel, but the only people I know who ONLY text are my mom and grandma. Everyone I know around my age (millennial) has a small collection of apps that they used a lot for a bit, and now maybe have one or two people they still talk to on.
  - specialist 5y ago
    Personal anecdata of one: I only text/msg with family. Am Gen X, now we're doing eldercare. Texting and voice calls (and voice mails) are the only skills our parents know. I've tried teaching them FaceTime, WhatsApp, some cooperative social games. Nope, too late. Once our parents pass, I probably won't even have a normal phone plan. The only other calls I get are telemarketers. Maybe switch to prepaid. For emergency services, and all these services using texts for 2FA.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  US millennials I am in contact with run their lives through SMS, or “whatever happens when I tell my phone to send a text message to someone in my contacts”. Source: Am US millennial in a dozen text groups.
  - paulgb 5y ago
    I think GP is saying “us millenials”, not “US millenials”. (I was confused for a moment myself)
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      Indeed. Edited for clarity.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    It's probably whatever was popular when you started using technology to stay in touch with your friend group. For millenials in the USA, that's SMS/text messages. I'm a older than millenial, but too young to be a boomer. I prefer email. Boomers I know tend to prefer phone calls. "Why can't you just pick up the phone" is a common complaint.
    - Nbox9 5y ago
      > I’m a older than millennial, but too young to be a boomer There is a generation in-between millennials and boomers, it’s called Generation X. It refers to people born in the 70s and early 80s.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      > It's probably whatever was popular when you started using technology to stay in touch with your friend group. Not really. My family and other Spanish circles largely use WhatsApp. That absolutely did not exist when things got started; heck, I remember when my dad got his first cellphone, which definitely couldn't do anything but SMS. Discord is also much more recent and a big subset of my generation has had no trouble embracing it; it is probably the messaging app I use most these days, by message volume. Way back we'd have been using stuff like MSN Messenger. And since moving to Japan I've seen things shift from Skype to LINE and now slowly to Discord. Voice calls are still popular in my family, but they have no trouble embracing different apps and ecosystems for it; I recently got my immediate family to switch to Telegram from Hangouts for talking among us, since Google botched their messaging ecosystem again (I refuse to use WhatsApp because it's by Meta but that's a me thing; either way Telegram is also an increasingly popular alternative overall). Americans being stuck with SMS when superior alternatives have existed for ages is something unique. Then again, so much of communications infrastructure/culture in America is bizarre (Paying for incoming phone calls on cellphones? What? That one shocked me when I spent 3 years studying in the US.)
- ryanmccullagh 5y ago
  iMessage is the best SMS application. Nothing compares. If you haven an iPhone, the native integrations with everything is incomparable to anything like Messenger, etc.
- Demcox 5y ago
  > In Europe you'll find people using WhatsApp or Telegram For whatever reason, in my country, everybody use FB Messenger for the absolute majority of their texting. And by "everybody" I mean teenagers, young adults, parents and the elerderly. It's only if you've had prolonged stays in other countries (or is exposed to international communication in other ways) that people will be familiar with WhatsApp and I'd guess that very few have ever heard of Telegram here.
gsinclair 5y ago
The quality of your written communication makes this high school teacher’s heart swell with pride.
- pkulak 5y ago
  That plural possessive apostrophe is damn impressive. Haven't seen one of those in an internet comment in years.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    I still use it myself (as a young person at that!), but feel increasingly pretentious for doing so. This is my burden for getting raised in a family of editors, I guess.
ryeights 5y ago
This is just selection bias (the type of teens in high school that post on HN). I know for a veritable fact that teens in high school in the US use iMessage.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  It has been decreasing, a lot, and not from selection bias. A few years ago a lot of people on my side were using iMessage, now almost everyone went over to discord and Insta. Some Telegram but not many.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jholman 5y ago
Just a quibble: not only are millenials "by and large" not teens any more, the very youngest of them are 25. Signed, a Gen X-er who won't use SMS except with his Boomer parents, and prefers gChat or Discord.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Does gChat even exist anymore? Signed, a zoomer.
petesergeant 5y ago
Elder millenial here; who the heck is using SMS or iMessage for communication? SMS is for messages from the bank. Insta/FB/WhatsApp/LINE and some weirdos using Telegram or Signal...
cbozeman 5y ago
By age, I'm Generation X, but by philosophy, attitude, etc., according to my nieces and nephews, I'm a millennial (one of my nieces actually thinks I'm a zoomer... lol), but I think you're spot on with this. I actually use whatever communications method the people in my life want to use. My Mom is 71 and wants to talk on the phone. My brother is 42 and does a mix of SMS / MMS texting, phone calls, and the occasional Facebook Messenger. My cousin likes to video call with Facebook Messenger. My nieces and nephews like to use Discord / Instagram / Snapchat, so I use those. It's weird - and more than a little stupid - how people get so hung up on a singular monolithic communication method.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Teenagers and young people in their 20s are not millenials anymore. FWIW, as a working Gen Z, I absolutely disagree with anyone trying to say that iMessage isn't popular. Sure it isn't the majority of conversations, but it does seem to be the preferred group chat app still.
tssva 5y ago
Since I have seen Discord mentioned multiple times in this thread I asked my high school aged daughter and she has no idea what Discord is. She has never heard one of her friends mention it. According to her the by far dominate communications platform for her friends and others at her school is Snapchat. I think the great mistake here is believing there is some consensus preferred platform among teens. The platform of choice likely differs greatly regionally and just among different friend groups.

marcan_42 5y ago

I'm a millennial and we don't use texts in most of the world either. Sticking to SMS and SMS-adjacent stuff like iMessage seems to be a fairly uniquely American thing. The last time I had an SMS conversation was... May 2020. And before that it was October 2019. Everything else is verification/notification SMSes. In Europe you'll find people using WhatsApp or Telegram; in Japan and Taiwan, LINE is king, and of course in China there's WeChat. There's also Twitter DMs. Discord has been becoming increasingly popular lately, especially among the tech/game and adjacent crowds. Nobody has used SMSes by default for years.

Talanes 5y ago
Do Americans even really "stick" to SMS? I know millennials who might use iMessage as their primary channel, but the only people I know who ONLY text are my mom and grandma. Everyone I know around my age (millennial) has a small collection of apps that they used a lot for a bit, and now maybe have one or two people they still talk to on.
- specialist 5y ago
  Personal anecdata of one: I only text/msg with family. Am Gen X, now we're doing eldercare. Texting and voice calls (and voice mails) are the only skills our parents know. I've tried teaching them FaceTime, WhatsApp, some cooperative social games. Nope, too late. Once our parents pass, I probably won't even have a normal phone plan. The only other calls I get are telemarketers. Maybe switch to prepaid. For emergency services, and all these services using texts for 2FA.
TameAntelope 5y ago
US millennials I am in contact with run their lives through SMS, or “whatever happens when I tell my phone to send a text message to someone in my contacts”. Source: Am US millennial in a dozen text groups.
- paulgb 5y ago
  I think GP is saying “us millenials”, not “US millenials”. (I was confused for a moment myself)
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    Indeed. Edited for clarity.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  It's probably whatever was popular when you started using technology to stay in touch with your friend group. For millenials in the USA, that's SMS/text messages. I'm a older than millenial, but too young to be a boomer. I prefer email. Boomers I know tend to prefer phone calls. "Why can't you just pick up the phone" is a common complaint.
  - Nbox9 5y ago
    > I’m a older than millennial, but too young to be a boomer There is a generation in-between millennials and boomers, it’s called Generation X. It refers to people born in the 70s and early 80s.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    > It's probably whatever was popular when you started using technology to stay in touch with your friend group. Not really. My family and other Spanish circles largely use WhatsApp. That absolutely did not exist when things got started; heck, I remember when my dad got his first cellphone, which definitely couldn't do anything but SMS. Discord is also much more recent and a big subset of my generation has had no trouble embracing it; it is probably the messaging app I use most these days, by message volume. Way back we'd have been using stuff like MSN Messenger. And since moving to Japan I've seen things shift from Skype to LINE and now slowly to Discord. Voice calls are still popular in my family, but they have no trouble embracing different apps and ecosystems for it; I recently got my immediate family to switch to Telegram from Hangouts for talking among us, since Google botched their messaging ecosystem again (I refuse to use WhatsApp because it's by Meta but that's a me thing; either way Telegram is also an increasingly popular alternative overall). Americans being stuck with SMS when superior alternatives have existed for ages is something unique. Then again, so much of communications infrastructure/culture in America is bizarre (Paying for incoming phone calls on cellphones? What? That one shocked me when I spent 3 years studying in the US.)
ryanmccullagh 5y ago
iMessage is the best SMS application. Nothing compares. If you haven an iPhone, the native integrations with everything is incomparable to anything like Messenger, etc.
Demcox 5y ago
> In Europe you'll find people using WhatsApp or Telegram For whatever reason, in my country, everybody use FB Messenger for the absolute majority of their texting. And by "everybody" I mean teenagers, young adults, parents and the elerderly. It's only if you've had prolonged stays in other countries (or is exposed to international communication in other ways) that people will be familiar with WhatsApp and I'd guess that very few have ever heard of Telegram here.

gsinclair 5y ago

The quality of your written communication makes this high school teacher’s heart swell with pride.

pkulak 5y ago
That plural possessive apostrophe is damn impressive. Haven't seen one of those in an internet comment in years.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  I still use it myself (as a young person at that!), but feel increasingly pretentious for doing so. This is my burden for getting raised in a family of editors, I guess.

ryeights 5y ago

This is just selection bias (the type of teens in high school that post on HN). I know for a veritable fact that teens in high school in the US use iMessage.

sudosysgen 5y ago
It has been decreasing, a lot, and not from selection bias. A few years ago a lot of people on my side were using iMessage, now almost everyone went over to discord and Insta. Some Telegram but not many.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jholman 5y ago

Just a quibble: not only are millenials "by and large" not teens any more, the very youngest of them are 25. Signed, a Gen X-er who won't use SMS except with his Boomer parents, and prefers gChat or Discord.

whimsicalism 5y ago
Does gChat even exist anymore? Signed, a zoomer.

petesergeant 5y ago

Elder millenial here; who the heck is using SMS or iMessage for communication? SMS is for messages from the bank. Insta/FB/WhatsApp/LINE and some weirdos using Telegram or Signal...

cbozeman 5y ago

By age, I'm Generation X, but by philosophy, attitude, etc., according to my nieces and nephews, I'm a millennial (one of my nieces actually thinks I'm a zoomer... lol), but I think you're spot on with this. I actually use whatever communications method the people in my life want to use. My Mom is 71 and wants to talk on the phone. My brother is 42 and does a mix of SMS / MMS texting, phone calls, and the occasional Facebook Messenger. My cousin likes to video call with Facebook Messenger. My nieces and nephews like to use Discord / Instagram / Snapchat, so I use those. It's weird - and more than a little stupid - how people get so hung up on a singular monolithic communication method.

whimsicalism 5y ago
Teenagers and young people in their 20s are not millenials anymore. FWIW, as a working Gen Z, I absolutely disagree with anyone trying to say that iMessage isn't popular. Sure it isn't the majority of conversations, but it does seem to be the preferred group chat app still.

tssva 5y ago

Since I have seen Discord mentioned multiple times in this thread I asked my high school aged daughter and she has no idea what Discord is. She has never heard one of her friends mention it. According to her the by far dominate communications platform for her friends and others at her school is Snapchat. I think the great mistake here is believing there is some consensus preferred platform among teens. The platform of choice likely differs greatly regionally and just among different friend groups.