How many apps do you use to chat with other people? I don’t mean tweeting out into the ether. I mean actually interacting with a fellow human in a one-to-one way.

For most people, the number is one or two. And it’s probably fewer than five. In the U.S., you likely keep in touch with friends and family through Apple or Google Messages, and touch base with colleagues on Slack or Teams. (For Europeans, that’s texting via WhatsApp.) If you’re a particularly rabid Swiftie, you might also have a raucous group chat through X or Instagram DMs; if you’re a gamer, you keep up with people on Discord.

But for all the time we hopscotch across apps like TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram to consume content, the number of platforms we actually use to interact with others remains minimal.

So what

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