Am Gen Z, and currently in college. Clearly am on Fediverse, and I was never a fan of using IG (only got it cause my middle school friends made me since COVID was happening) and I have completely deactivated my account as of last winter. I have met several people at my college who don't use Instagram for various reasons, and while my other friend is a little disappointed that she can't message them on insta, at the end of the day, we live and move on.

At my college a lot of clubs use GroupMe (owned by Microsoft unfortunately) and we have an official Discord Hub that a lot of clubs are on also. So there's two different methods of communication that aren't Insta that are common on my campus. Some of my friends do have Signal in fact (even my Instagram loving friend), but because more of them don't we unfortunately don't use Signal, even when I beg my one friend who has it. She says 'it sucks and who uses it", but I've never really had the chance to use it to judge her statement as true or not.

Anyway, yeah, you could do a bunch of crazy shit and make fake accounts on Insta to have superficial conversations with people who won't give you the time of day for having an app, or you could just not. It's not that hard to find better friends/people to hang out with, and if you really make a connection with them then they should be happy with any form of communication you offer. Not all Gen Z are adamant Instagram defenders, some even hate it for various reasons (Suckerberg, being data stalkers, promoting bigotry, promoting mental health disorders, etc.)