Reddit now more popular than X in the UK, says Ofcom

Reddit, the social media platform popular with tech and gaming enthusiasts, has overtaken X to become the UK's fifth most popular social platform, according to Ofcom. 

By June this year, it was the fastest growing platform of its kind in the UK and reached more than half of UK adults, according to the communication regulator's latest report into the nation's digital habits.

Although Reddit operates as a forum, it is still a social media platform, filled with user generated content, chats and conversations between users.

Since Ofcom's last report, 47% more UK adults used Reddit in one month, with 22.9 million UK adults accessing the site in May 2024.

X, on the other hand, had 8% fewer UK adults using its site in May 2024 compared with the same month last year.

A total of 22.1 million adults accessed Elon Musk's platform in May 2024, while 24 million were on there in the same month in 2023.

The most popular platform overall was Google's YouTube, followed by Facebook and Messenger, Instagram, TikTok and then Reddit.

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The report comes as Elon Musk's X faces an exodus, partially driven by the billionaires' entry into US politics.

Read more: Could Bluesky spike spark end of X?

After president-elect Donald Trump won the US election and asked Mr Musk to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency, users flooded other social media sites.

Bluesky, a site similar to previous versions of Twitter, now has 23 million users, according to a counter cited by Bluesky employees.

The site gained a million people in just one day after the US election, according to the official Bluesky account.

Others users headed to Meta's Threads app, with Instagram chief executive revealing that over 15 million new users had joined the app since the beginning of November.

The Ofcom report also revealed that women now spend more time online than men in the UK, clocking up an average of an extra 33 minutes more each day in May 2024.

On average, women spent four hours and 36 minutes online, compared with men spending to four hours and three minutes.

(c) Sky News 2024: Reddit now more popular than X in the UK, says Ofcom