Six percent of online adults are reddit users,¹ according to a nationally representative survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. This is our first survey that specifically examines reddit as a standalone platform, and it finds that young men are especially likely to visit the site. 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.

Self-described as the “front page of the internet,” reddit is a bulletin of user-submitted text, links, photos, and videos. The site hosts active sub-communities on a wide selection of topics, ranging from world news headlines, to animal GIFs, to fan forums and various niche topics. The popularity and prominence of material on the site is determined by voting from the reddit community. reddit gained widespread publicity when President Barack Obama took part in the site’s “Ask Me Anything” series in August 2012, and again in April 2013 when the site was used as a collaboration space for amateur sleuths attempting to identify the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings.

Overall, men are twice as likely as women to be reddit users, those under 50 are significantly more likely to use reddit than those 50 or older, and the site is much more common among urban and suburban residents than among those living in rural areas. Indeed, just 2% of internet users ages 50 and older—and 2% of rural residents—say they use the site.

More about reddit

reddit features a user-voting system  (called up- and down-voting) to rank posts, comments, and links within its sub-communities (known as subreddits).  Subreddits and posts can range from the serious to the absurd, and from general topics to niche interests.  The front page of reddit features popular submissions from across the site and typically rotates top posts regularly throughout the day.  People who use reddit are called redditors.

reddit is often pivotal in the spread of popular memes, like Ridiculously Photogenic Guy, Overly Attached Girlfriend, and Sudden Clarity Clarence. 

One of the most popular subreddits, IamA (“I am a”) features a popular question forum called Ask Me Anything (AMA). redditors with “something uncommon that plays a central role in your life” or who have experienced “a truly interesting and unique event” host a session with the prompt “I am a…..ask me anything.”  Other redditors can then submit questions and comments.  Examples vary from “IAmA prison guard at a maximum security prison, AMA” to “IAmA wildlife cameraman. AMA” and “IAmA Liberal Saudi Woman Living in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. AMA!”  Celebrities have also participated in AMA, including Stephen Colbert, Judy Blume, Paul Krugman, and Bill Gates. 

For a more in-depth overview of the site, visit Mashable’s “Reddit for Beginners” or poke around the site at reddit.com.

This report is based on the findings of a survey on Americans’ use of the Internet. The results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from April 17 to May 19, 2013, among a sample of 2,252 adults, age 18 and older.  Telephone interviews were conducted in English and Spanish by landline (1,125) and cell phone (1,127, including 571 without a landline phone). For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.  For results based on Internet users² (n=1,895), the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.  In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting telephone surveys may introduce some error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.

A combination of landline and cellular random digit dial (RDD) samples was used to represent all adults in the United States who have access to either a landline or cellular telephone. Both samples were provided by Survey Sampling International, LLC (SSI) according to PSRAI specifications.  Numbers for the landline sample were drawn with equal probabilities from active blocks (area code + exchange + two-digit block number) that contained three or more residential directory listings. The cellular sample was not list-assisted, but was drawn through a systematic sampling from dedicated wireless 100-blocks and shared service 100-blocks with no directory-listed landline numbers.

New sample was released daily and was kept in the field for at least five days. The sample was released in replicates, which are representative subsamples of the larger population. This ensures that complete call procedures were followed for the entire sample.  At least 7 attempts were made to complete an interview at a sampled telephone number. The calls were staggered over times of day and days of the week to maximize the chances of making contact with a potential respondent. Each number received at least one daytime call in an attempt to find someone available. For the landline sample, interviewers asked to speak with the youngest adult male or female currently at home based on a random rotation. If no male/female was available, interviewers asked to speak with the youngest adult of the other gender. For the cellular sample, interviews were conducted with the person who answered the phone. Interviewers verified that the person was an adult and in a safe place before administering the survey. Cellular sample respondents were offered a post-paid cash incentive for their participation. All interviews completed on any given day were considered to be the final sample for that day.

Weighting is generally used in survey analysis to compensate for sample designs and patterns of non-response that might bias results. A two-stage weighting procedure was used to weight this dual-frame sample. The first-stage corrected for different probabilities of selection associated with the number of adults in each household and each respondent’s telephone usage patterns.³ This weighting also adjusts for the overlapping landline and cell sample frames and the relative sizes of each frame and each sample.

The second stage of weighting balances sample demographics to population parameters. The sample is balanced to match national population parameters for sex, age, education, race, Hispanic origin, region (U.S. Census definitions), population density, and telephone usage. The Hispanic origin was split out based on nativity; U.S born and non-U.S. born. The basic weighting parameters came from the US Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey data. The population density parameter was derived from Census 2010 data. The telephone usage parameter came from an analysis of the January-June 2012 National Health Interview Survey.

Following is the full disposition of all sampled telephone numbers:

The disposition reports all of the sampled telephone numbers ever dialed from the original telephone number samples. The response rate estimates the fraction of all eligible respondents in the sample that were ultimately interviewed. At PSRAI it is calculated by taking the product of three component rates:

• Contact rate – the proportion of working numbers where a request for interview was made
• Cooperation rate – the proportion of contacted numbers where a consent for interview was at least initially obtained, versus those refused
• Completion rate – the proportion of initially cooperating and eligible interviews that were completed

Thus the response rate for the landline sample was 10 percent. The response rate for the cellular sample was 13 percent.