Number of people who come out on Facebook grows

Timed to coincide with Spirit Day, Facebook’s Research and Data Science division has published a report outlining how increasing numbers of US users that identify as lesbian, gay, bi or transexual have come out on the social network this year.

In honor of this year’s celebration, Facebook has published a report looking at trends of people who have “come out” over the past year.

“Over the past year, approximately 800,000 Americans updated their profile to express a same-gender attraction or custom gender”, the blog post says.

“The number of people on Facebook coming out per day is on track to be three times what it was a year ago”.

In total, 6 million Americans have come out on Facebook, with 78% of these people having done so since the beginning of 2012.

Of course, not all parts of the country are equally friendly and tolerant of LGBT people, and the company has also revealed which states have the most, and least, out LGBT people.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark same sex marriage ruling in June was an important catalyst. “On the day of the Supreme Court ruling, this ratio was double, one out of every five people”.

‘On a typical day, one out of every ten people who change their “interested in” status on Facebook do so to reflect a same-gender interest. Like the number of Americans coming out, the support for LGBT pages is similarly increasing at a rapid pace and enjoyed a spike immediately after June’s Supreme Court decision. More than 26 million LGBT and ally users also added the rainbow filter to their profile pictures.

Facebook is also studying the spike in online support for LGBT groups on the site.

Indeed, it is in the publicity (even within small friend circles) that Facebook has lent the LGBT community that many activists and allies see the true value of the platform. What’s more, 5.7 million Americans have joined one of the 300 most popular LGBT pages, a jump of close to 25 percent over the past year.

“Facebook’s research is proving just what a difference visibility makes to LGBT people”, said Jay Brown, director of research and public education at Human Rights Campaign Foundation, in a statement.