Ten likes. One comment.
That is the median TEDx talk. Not a typo, a single comment. Almost half of all talks get fewer than 10 likes, and 42% never get a single comment.
Nearly half of all talks get zero comments.
A comment section is the clearest sign a talk reached real people who cared enough to respond. For 42% of TEDx talks, it never happens. Add the ones with a single comment and you are at 58%.
This is not a quality problem. It is a reach problem.
Likes and comments cannot exist without an audience. With a median of just 291 views, most TEDx talks never reach enough people to gather a meaningful number of either. That empty comment section on 42% of talks is not a verdict on the idea, the delivery, or the topic. It is the sound of a talk that was never seen.
Engagement is hoarded, just like the views.
The same winner-takes-all pattern from the view gap shows up in likes and comments. A tiny fraction of talks soaks up almost all the interaction on the entire channel.
Your talk isn’t unlikeable. It’s unseen.
Likes and comments only happen once people arrive, and for most TEDx talks they never do. The reason your talk went quiet is not the idea, the delivery, or the topic. It is that it never found an audience. That is a distribution problem, and it is solvable.
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How many likes does the average TEDx talk get?
The median TEDx talk gets just 10 likes. Nearly half (48%) get fewer than 10, and about 9 in 10 stay under 100.
How many comments does a TEDx talk get?
The median is 1 comment. 42% of all TEDx talks get zero comments, and 58% get one or none.
Are TEDx talks with low likes and comments just low quality?
Not necessarily. Engagement needs an audience, and with a median of only 291 views most talks never reach enough people to gather likes or comments. Low totals reflect low reach, not weak ideas.
Do likes and comments spread evenly across TEDx?
No. Engagement is hoarded like views are. The top 1% of talks capture 74% of all likes and 49% of all comments on the channel.
Methodology & scope
This is first-party data, collected by us over 18 months and refreshed to current counts on 28 Aug 2026. It is the companion to The TEDx View Gap.
- Source: the official TEDx YouTube channel, via the YouTube Data API. Independent TEDx-event channels are not included.
- Sample: 34,289 TEDx talks with valid view, like, and comment counts. Shorts excluded.
- Medians are used throughout, because a handful of viral talks skew every average.
- Note: counts are a snapshot and keep rising for younger talks. The concentration findings are ratios and are robust to age.