More Americans Are Using Facebook to Come Out Each Year

Last week marked National Coming Out Day and Spirit Day, two important annual events for the LGBT community. As part of the celebration, Facebook’s Research and Data Science division published a report revealing more Americans are choosing to come out on Facebook than ever before.

According to Facebook’s blog post, not only has the number and rate of people choosing to come out on the social media website has shown steady growth, but support for LGBT groups has increased, as well. Interestingly, they also discovered landmark events, such as the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage, to have an effect on both occurrences. The number of people who chose to come out on that day was more than twice it was on National Coming Out Day in 2014, and 26 million users added a rainbow filter to their profile picture in support.

Support for LGBT fan pages has also risen by around 25% over the past year, and was shown to increase around the time of the ruling. More than 6 million Americans identify as LGBT on Facebook with 800,000 users coming out just this past year. The report suggests the number is most likely an underestimate, since Facebook measures the info by users who change their “interested in” status or specify a custom gender.