Americans are increasingly coming out on Facebook, according to a new report published by the social network in honor of National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11 and GLAAD's Spirit Day on Oct. 15.
Facebook used aggregated, anonymous user data to look at the total number of Americans that have come out each day, which the social network has defined as "updating one's profile to express a same-gender attraction" or "specifying a custom gender," which was introduced to the platform in February 2014. Looking at the percentage of Americans that came out on Facebook each day as a percentage of those who came out on Oct. 11, 2014, last year's National Coming Out Day, the data shows coming out has risen dramatically in nearly a year on the social network.
The biggest spike came on June 26 when the Supreme Court ruled on marriage equality, showing there were 2.5 times as many Americans coming out on this day than on Oct. 11 of the previous year.
Facebook's graph below shows the rise of Americans coming out on the social network in the past year.
Approximately 800,000 Americans have updated their profiles to reflect a same-gender attraction on Facebook in the past year and more than 6 million have come out in total based on the aforementioned criteria. The number of people coming out on Facebook per day is on track to be three times that of what it was last year, according to the data.
Not only are more American Facebook users coming out, but Americans are increasingly showing their support for the LGBT community on the social network as well. The total number of fans of LGBT pages has increased nearly 25 percent over the last year, which also got a big bump around the time of the Supreme Court decision.
Via: Engadget
