More Americans Are Coming Out On Facebook Than Ever Before

On a typical day, the report estimates 10 percent of Facebook members who change the “interested in” button state they prefer someone from the same gender. However, today we learned that they’re also a massive facilitator allowing people worldwide to come out to their friends and family – and these important statuses are only going to grow in numbers. Overall, says Facebook, 800,000 USA users have expressed a few sort of custom gender or same-gender attraction on their profile.

“When you come to Facebook to connect with the people, causes, and organizations you care about, we want you to feel comfortable being your true, authentic self”. The most popular day for coming out, by far, was June 26, the day of the Supreme’s courts ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which made marriage equality the law of the land. Previously, the social network had come under scrutiny when it asked users to strictly identify as “male” or “female”. They have labeled coming out of the closet as one user’s decision to update its Facebook profile so as to recognize same-gender attraction.

The total was “roughly 2.5 times higher than it was on October 11th (National Coming Out Day) of the previous year”.

The number of people coming out in a single day spiked when the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples had the right to marry in every state.

And there’s perhaps no stronger place for support than on Facebook: during the Supreme Court’s decision, more than 26 million people opted to change their profile pictures in favor of a rainbow filter.

Yesterday, Facebook released a few data in honor of Spirit Day and National Coming Out Day revealing that the social network has seen more Americans than ever coming out on the site.

Moreover, the researchers found that since the Supreme Court’s decision, likes for the LGBT pages increased notably to 25 percent over the past year.

Jay Brown, director of research at Human Rights Campaign Foundation is upbeat.

Jay Brown, the director of the institution, has explained that Facebook decided to make this data public because they thought visibility will help the LGBT community.