The figures are in. Six percent of adult internet users in the US have checked out Reddit – the internet's top repository for memes, quirky old news stories and user-generated interviews with famous people.

Reddit users are primarily young, male and from suburban and urban areas, according to a study conducted by Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project on Wednesday.

Pew found that "young males are especially likely to use Reddit", with more men in each age category identifying as Reddit users than women. The disparity was greatest in the 18-29 demographic, which has 15% male users and 5% female users.

The percentage of male Reddit users drops off significantly in older age groups, while the amount of female users remains about the same – 8% of men age 30-49 and 5% of women age 30-49 said they use Reddit.

The percentage of adult internet users on Reddit is the same as those who use Tumblr, according to a February Pew survey. The survey showed that of the major social media sites, Tumblr has the fewest users, compared to the 13% who use Instagram, 16% who use Pinterest, 16% who use Twitter and 67% who use Facebook.

Pew surveyed more than 2,250 adults aged 18 and older in English and Spanish by phone in April and May of 2013 to gather the results. The results also showed Reddit use patterns by income, residential and race demographics.

In the race/ethnicity section, 11% of Hispanic people surveyed said they used Reddit. This response was significantly greater than respondents in the two other racial categories: white, non-Hispanic and black, Non-Hispanic had 5% and 4% Reddit users, respectively.

Unsurprisingly, only 2% of internet users aged 65 and older said they used Reddit. This may not account for Reddit threads where site users post for their older relatives. Last week, Reddit user kinger97 helped his 88-year-old second world war veteran grandfather respond to questions in the site's Ask Me Anything section.

In the education attainment section, people with no high school diploma had the largest percentage of Reddit users, with 9% saying they use the site. The next most popular was people with at least a college education, 7% of which use Reddit.

Reddit use was more popular among urban and suburban resident compared to people living in rural areas with 6% of people from urban areas and 6% of people from suburban areas saying they use Reddit. Only 2% of people from rural areas said they use the site.

Three of the four categories for household income had 6% Reddit users. The fourth group, people with a household income of $50-75k group, consisted of 7% Reddit users.

On Wednesday afternoon, a link to the study made it to the front page of the site, indicating the article's popularity among Reddit users. Comments on this thread included: "We are the 6%" and "itshappening.gif."