The Rising Trend In Love, Coming Out On Social Media

Ever since same-sex marriage became legalized in America, there has been a massive increase in people coming out on social media. Facebook's Research and Data Science division decided to analyze the enormous rise in Americans who were coming out, and what they found was that there was a huge influx right after the Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage on June 26 of this year.

As of now, more than 6 million Americans have come out on Facebook.

Facebook looked at several different trends in honor of National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11 and #SpiritDay on Oct. 15.

They found that in the past year, over 800,000 Americans updated their profile to fit a different gender attraction. According to the data, 1 in 10 people every day change their interested gender status.

The data also analyzed how many people had added a rainbow filter over their profile pictures on the court decision day and found that over 26 million people had done so, including the White House's social media pages.

Not only are people becoming more comfortable with coming out on social media, but there has also been a huge influx in LGBTQ group support. This was a large turnaround from just 10 years ago, when Proposition 8 took away California's same-sex couples rights to be married.

Beyond Facebook, there has also been a huge movement in YouTubers coming out to their fans. Content creators who have been quiet for years because of fear of judgment or loss of fans are now using YouTube as a platform for coming out.

Ingrid Nilsen, a famous beauty guru on YouTube with over 3 million subscribers, came out in early June right before the Supreme Court decision. Her coming-out video has received over 12 million views.

Other YouTubers such as Shane Dawson, Joey Graceffa, and Connor Franta have come out within the past year on their channels. For the most part, they have all received very positive feedback from the media as well as their fans. Something that still seems strange, however, is the fact that people still have to come out. There is a stigma still that will probably take a generation or two to destroy. Hopefully, one day people will to look back and think it's crazy that one would have to "come out" to others about who they love or want to love. It's a strange time to be alive, but at least we're living during a time where we're making progress.