5 ms·

I'd be genuinely curious where the average age numbers come from? From a point of zero objective information I'd have guess the average age to be mid to late t

• DanielBMarkham 14y ago
  We've polled this at least twice that I remember. In addition, I did a poll on caffeine and age among HNers a year or two ago (dig, dig) Here it is: http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/09/hackers-and-caf.php http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/09/hackers-and-c... My poll showed mid-20s, but that was 3.5 years ago. If I remember correctly, polls show the age continuing to drop as more folks join. This isn't much of an argument, but if you think about it, people most likely to be on HN are people who are not doing anything useful besides consuming stuff. That group should trend heavily towards the younger and unemployed. As total numbers rise, total number of young people who are actively consuming HN at any one time should rise disproportionately, no?
  • talkingquickly 14y ago
    Makes sense the most active users would be the one's with the most free time (the younger and unemployed). Unless of course there are many people - such as myself - who consider Hacker News a fairly useful learning resource and so contribute (albeit not very often) despite having a lot of other things to do? I'd be very interested to see how the average age of the submitters of "useful" content - e.g. posts which rate highly (ok a very tenuous definition of useful) and content heavy comments - compares to the overall average.
• sesqu 14y ago
  It'd worth noting that the average registered user is quite a different thing from the average commenter. It's also worth noting that in many cases, age is a variable with high deviation.