Online Pride: Americans Coming Out on Facebook in Record Numbers

Based on this criteria, a total of six million Americans have come out on Facebook.

The social media giant construes “coming out” as updating one’s Facebook profile to convey same-sex attraction, or identifying with a custom gender.

With the rise in Facebook’s popularity as a tool for social change and progressivism, many have taken to the platform not only to express themselves, but to express support for friends and family as well.

This is less than half of the number in states including New York and Nevada – where over 4 percent of people are openly LGBT. “On the day of the Supreme Court ruling, this ratio was double, one out of every five people”. In fact, over the past 12 months, a number of over 800,000 Americans came out on Facebook.

“On a typical day, one out of every 10 people who change their “interested in” status on Facebook do so to reflect a same-gender interest”, wrote State and Wernerfelt.

There was also a notable spike immediately following June’s Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, which saw 2.5x as many people come out as they had on Coming Out Day 2014.

This indicates incredible progress and marks one of the largest increases in support for the LGBTI community in history.

Like many technology companies, Facebook is an ally of LGBT rights whether it’s celebrating Pride or joining others like Apple in support of gay marriage. That type of profile update is what Facebook counted as “coming out”, though it warned that the resulting numbers were nearly certainly significantly lower than the actual numbers of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender folks on the social network.

Jay Brown, director of research and public education at Human Rights Campaign Foundation, said the research suggests visibility can help the LGBT community.

“In a year that’s seen unprecedented coverage of LGBT people – from major coming out moments to Supreme Court victories to tragedies shaking the community – we see people becoming visible in their own lives”, Brown said. They have been offered a voice and have also seen from the support of millions of people.

This makes it possible that they will potentially reach 1 million by the end of the year.