Welcome to First Click, an essay written by The Verge staff in which we opine on lives lived in the near future.

Last month I argued that our phones, be they Android or iOS, have pretty much solved chat fragmentation. The way they handle notifications and contacts helps us keep track of everyone we chat with, no matter what app they use. Agree or not, there's no denying that we're using more chat apps than ever.

When I tally up all of the apps I use to chat with people, I count Messages, Slack, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Twitter — and that's just on my phone's most important real estate: screen one. Diving deeper I also count Facbeook Messenger, Snapchat, Skype, Hangouts, and Signal. Excluding email, that gives me a total of 10 apps that function as regular chat clients with at least one of my contacts.

So, what about you dear reader, how many chat apps do you use?