In the UK, the community-driven platform Reddit has overtaken TikTok as the fourth most popular form of social media, Ofcom data reveals.
Three in five people in the UK now visit Reddit, compared with a third in 2023.
Reddit is particularly popular amongst young people between the ages of 18 and 24, where more than three quarters of this group visit the site. Now, the UK is the second largest market behind the US for Reddit.
Reddit is primarily made up of discussion groups where users can ask questions and see what real people are saying about specific topics. These discussions take place in ‘threads’ – a continuous chain of comments that stem from a main post.
The quick increase in Reddit’s popularity over the past year has been primarily attributed to shifts in online search fuelled by Gen AI tools, such as Google’s AI Overviews.
An AI-Fueled Boom
OfCom’s Online Nation report found that UK adults spend an average of four and half hours online a day – up by 10 minutes from last year.
The report also found that despite Google still being the most used search tool in the UK, Gen AI is changing the way we behave online – 30 percent of keyword search queries deliver AI Overviews and over half (53 percent) of UK people report seeing AI summaries when they search.
These shifts are cited as the leading reasons for Reddit’s rise in popularity in the UK.
Google changed one of its search algorithms last year to prioritise relevant content from discussion forums, which is likely to have pushed users to the website.
Google also struck a deal with Reddit to train its AI model Gemini on the social media platform’s content. As a result of both of these factors, Reddit is the most cited source in Google’s AI Overviews.
Reddit’s chief operating officer told The Guardian that for users, Reddit serves as an alternative to the “manicured down” responses from AI chatbots, giving them a diversity of perspectives and the experiences of real people – possibly hinting at users desires for more human-centric content in an online world becoming increasingly dominated by AI content.
