Ofcom's annual report on digital habits has revealed that Reddit has surged past X - which was formerly known as Twitter - and LinkedIn in popularity, thereby becoming the fifth most-popular social media platform in the UK.
The report found that Reddit - which is an American discussion forum with topic-based communities - was visited by 22.9 million UK adults in May this year, compared to 22.1 million adults who used X in the same timeframe.
The figures actually make Reddit the fastest-growing large social media platform in the UK and represent a growth of 47 percent on the same period in 2023.
X, on the other hand, had eight percent fewer UK adults using its site in May 2024 compared with the same month last year.
The most popular platform overall was Google's YouTube, followed by Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and then Reddit.
Reddit also appears to have been boosted by updates to Google’s search engine.
Farhad Divecha, the managing director of the UK-based digital marketing agency AccuraCast, said: “Google’s latest algorithm update in the first half of 2024 gave Reddit a big boost in organic search traffic. I think that has probably contributed a lot.”
Ofcom also speculated that the change may have been caused by alterations to how third-party apps accessed its content, forcing users of those apps to switch to the Reddit site.
