I visited a university recently and brought up IRC in a conversation. Some students did not know what it was and some said “that’s for old people”. So, that’s the genz perception. I wonder to what extent that’s true… what proportion of IRC users on the notable networks are genz.
I have doubts, because it seems there are still snot nose trolls demonstrating that children are still around. But it would be interesting to have some reliable stats.

Well, I’ve seen it first-hand. The irc server cluster I’ve been uninterrupted on since the early 00’s has dwindled from 25-ish to 2. I think the userbase has shrunk from tens of thousands to a couple hundred. We might as well pretend IRC no longer exists. Do wish that it would.