Reddit Demographics

We originally published this article in 2014, check out some more updated statistics directly from Reddit as of 2021 here. Also, read our blog post from February 2021 titled “Why Your Brand Shouldn’t Use Reddit” to get our take on why brands need to change their view on what they can “get” out of Reddit. 

A 2011 survey by reddit and 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center both confirm reddit’s predominantly young adult male demographics. However, these trends don’t necessarily apply to all of the 400k+ subreddits within reddit, as there do exist subreddits targeted toward female and slightly older audiences.

Post Contents

  1. 2014 Reddit Media Kit
  2. 2011 Reddit Survey
  3. 2013 Pew Survey
  4. Differing Subreddit Demographics
  5. Subreddit Surveys

1. 2014 Reddit Media Kit

In mid-2014, reddit posted traffic and demographic information to their media kit page, shown below.

TRAFFIC

March Unique Visitors: 114 million

March Pageviews: 5.6 billion

March Avg. Time Spent Per Visit: 14 min.

(Source: Google Analytics, 2014)

AUDIENCE

Median Age: 35.20 years

Media HHI: $67,973.30

M/F: 63.7/36.3

(Source: Nielsen @plan 2014 Q1)

2. 2011 Reddit Survey

In September 2011, reddit announced the conclusion of a demographics survey that began in July 2011. The data was publicly released, and supported prior speculations of the average redditor being “a 20-something American male,” but also provided data about education, marital and relationship statistics. Below are results for the 20,978 U.S. respondents to the survey (there were 11,778 other respondents who didn’t list their current country of residence as U.S.).

Gender

Male — 78%

Female — 21%

Age

Under 18 — 7%

18 – 24 — 49%

25 – 34 — 35%

35 – 44 — 7%

45 – 54 — 2%

55 or above — 1%

Marital Status

Single — 32%

In a relationship — 30%

Engaged — 4%

Married / domestic partnership — 19%

Forever alone — 15%

Employment

Student — 39%

Not employed — 9%

Freelance — 5%

Full-time — 46%

Education

Some high school — 6%

High school degree or equivalent — 8%

Some college — 33%*

Trade degree — 1%

Associate degree — 5%

Bachelor degree — 35%

Graduate degree — 12%

(*The high percentage of “some college” is likely because 39% of redditors listed employment as “student”)

3. 2013 Pew Survey

In July 2013, the Pew Research Center published results from a nationally representative (U.S.) phone survey on reddit demographics. It too confirmed the high representation of young adult males on reddit: “young men are especially likely to visit [reddit]. Some 15% of male internet users ages 18-29 say that they use reddit, compared with 5% of women in the same age range and 8% of men ages 30-49” and also that reddit “is much more common among urban and suburban residents than among those living in rural areas.”

The 2013 Pew survey method differed significantly from the 2011 reddit survey in that it involved a random sampling of American phone numbers, regardless of whether the respondents used reddit or not, whereas the 2011 reddit survey was only completed by reddit users. Below are the results from the 2013 Pew survey.

4. Differing Subreddit Demographics

The primarily young adult male demographics of reddit don’t hold true for every one of reddit’s 400k+ subreddits, as there are many subreddits that specifically target non-male and non-young adult audiences. Below are some examples of subreddits whose target audience differs from reddit’s young adult male demographics.

Non-Young Adult Male Targeted Subreddits

Name

Subscribers

Description

TwoXChromosomes

165k

“Thoughtful content — serious or silly — related to gender, and intended for women’s perspectives.”

MakeupAddiction

150k

Makeup tutorials, product recommendations, related musings and more.

AskWomen

128k

Questions for women about behavior, anatomy, habits or anything else.

XXFitness

40k

Fitness-related content for female redditors.

ActualLesbians

30k

“A place for discussions for and by lesbians.”

Transgender

13k

Transgender news, issues and discussions.

RedditForGrownups

12k

“A community for redditors that are starting to get that ‘get off my lawn’ feeling whenever they check their front page.”

Over30Reddit

3k

“For people who are mature and / or over 30 and tired of all the crap posts by kids in reddit.”

R4R30Plus

2k

redditors looking to meet other redditors over the age of 30.

5. Subreddit Surveys

Occasionally subreddits will run demographics and interests surveys to give the community a better idea of its makeup, especially because the majority of reddit users are anonymous, and there’s no profile section for users to describe themselves. Searching reddit for “r/[subreddit name] survey results” will likely return survey results for that subreddit (e.g. “r/Europe survey results”), although the specific syntax sometimes varies.

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