Reddit wants to help brands predict the future — for example, when a restaurant should offer lab-grown food, or a beauty brand should offer DNA-based skincare treatments or DNA-personalized vitamins.

On Thursday, Reddit released a report with these insights based on the company’s communities as part of its participation at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

The analysis offers a glimpse into the future and a resource for marketers wanting to understand how the discussions of today on the platform are shaping what’s next.

Early adopters of technology spend time on the platform sharing their views. In fact, those using the platform have an established record for adopting products before they have gone mainstream. So, Reddit asked them to help paint a picture of what they think the future has in store.

The study shares Reddit conversations for the most-talked-about tech innovations, and then surveyed redditors — those who use the platform — to ask when they anticipated each innovation was likely to go mainstream.

Technologies like the metaverse, drones and biometrics-driven tech seem to be here to stay — but they are a little while off in the future. For example, space tourism and autonomous vehicles that transform into spaces to work, dine and entertain will not go mainstream until 2050.

Gen Z redditors are more excited for space tourism than other generations. Redditors ages 55 and up hope to see jetpack transportation by the year 2050, and hope to see robot chefs and maids by the same year.

Redditors also believe insect proteins will be mainstream by 2025, and under-skin fitness trackers are too close for comfort and believe they will never go mainstream.

The analysis in this report — Reddit Future Tellers: What Reddit communities tell us about the mainstream technologies of tomorrow — is based on an online survey of 2,000 U.S. residents ages 18 to 60 years old, fielded in August 2022. All respondents had to report regular usage of either Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or Twitter, defined as logging into the respective platform at least once per month.

Reddit wants to help brands predict the future – for example, when a restaurant should offer lab-grown food, or a beauty brand should offer DNA-based skincare treatments or DNA-personalized vitamins.