Online Spaces and LGBTQ+ youth: Liberating or Counterproductive?
Lena Swartzentruber and Lucy Davis
Introduction
The formation of LGBTQ+ identity has always been a relatively covert process. Even in the most LGBTQ+ friendly societies, heteronormativity makes LGBTQ+ identity stick out, and exploration of sexual and gender identity may pose risk of social ostracization by peers. LGBTQ+ youth may feel discouraged from self-expression and delay identity formation, potentially resulting in greater likelihood of depression and anxiety.
As out queer people ourselves, we feel that creating safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth to express themselves, form their identities, and authentically connect with others is a vital humanitarian issue. We also feel that the internet is among the greatest tools for safe-space-creation and the coming-out process to emerge in recent history. It's a place where LGBTQ+ youth can ask stigmatizing questions, find important advice and information, seek out supportive peers, or even benefit from the visibility of "out" role models. By being both anonymous and public, the web
provides a relatively safer environment for LGBTQ+ youth to find new information, connect with peers, and literally try on new identities, swap pronouns, and search for sexuality labels until finding something that fits.
This evaluation of the web’s potential for LGBTQ+ youth comes from our own experiences, but is also upheld by a plethora of research (see the further reading section). As researchers evaluate platform structures and gather testimonials from LGBTQ+ folks, the evidence for its positive impact is clear. However these studies also illustrate negative aspects: being “outed” by algorithms, creation of toxic subcultures, and greater exposure to hate speech. We cannot take for granted that the internet is an entirely safe space, or always conducive to coming out.
In our exploration, we hope to achieve a more profound, more nuanced understanding of how LGBTQ+ youth’s use of the web in early identity formation may have impacted the coming out process. More precisely we hope to answer the following question: to what extent does the use of online anonymity and digital spaces facilitate the coming out process for LBGTQ+ youth? Our working hypothesis is that, because the web can provide access to a judgement free, supportive space for youth that may not have such spaces in other aspects of life, online identity exploration activities will ultimately be more positive than negative and aid the coming out process. Nevertheless, we hope that, through personal accounts of negative experiences, we can understand what aspects of the internet truly pose a risk to LGBTQ+ youth, perhaps to, in other endeavors, seek to solve these problems, further refine safe-space creation and promote supportive online cultures.
Methodology
Overview
We conducted interviews and supplementary research in order to answer this question. Ten participants completed a video call interview with us lasting from ten to sixty minutes depending on how long the participants elaborated on their responses. We selected participants on the condition that they self-identified as LGBTQ+ and had “come out” to the degree that they could discuss that process. Nine participants were people who we already had a direct connection to, and one participant was an indirect connection. As we needed to find people who were comfortable talking at length about their sexuality and gender identity and responding to personal questions, we were obliged to limit ourselves to this small study group. All participants consented to their interview recordings being used in the final product, though some opted to use a pseudonym.
Participants
Participants’ ages ranged from 16 to 21 years old, the mode was 19 years old and the average age was 18.8 (see graph below).
When asked to self-identify their sexuality, seven participants described themselves as bisexual, two as gay, and one as queer (see chart below).
Gender identity was more diverse: four participants described themselves as a cisgender men, two as a cisgender women, two as nonbinary, one as a trangender man, and one as queer (see chart below).
There is also variety within the categories of sexuality, for example of the seven bisexual people interviewed, two identified their gender as non-binary, three identified as cisgender or transgender men, and one identified as a woman (see chart below).
The label “gay” was also used by a participant who identified as a woman and a participant who identified as a man. Sexuality and gender identity can certainly both evolve, as confirmed by several interviews in which participants acknowledged that they have changed the way they identify over time. However for the purposes of this study, we have categorized people based on how they introduced their sexuality and gender at the time of the interview. We intentionally only interviewed people from North America in order to narrow the scope of our study, but participants still hailed from a variety of places: six from California, two from Pennsylvania, one from Virginia, and one from British Columbia (see map below). Though our study was relatively small, we were able to obtain a plethora of data and testimonies to inform our analysis.
Procedure
In order to gain an understanding of each participant's experience with the internet as it related to sexuality and gender, we put together a list of several short and long-answer questions and elaborated with follow-up and additional questions during each interview. After they introduced themselves, we asked each participant to define “coming out” as it is a subjective term that can mean very different things to different people. We then asked them to share when and how they came out. We then asked about their experience with the internet— when they first remembered using a phone or computer and what sorts of things they used it for. Then we asked questions about how participants used the internet as it related to their exploration of their sexuality and gender. These questions took us to myriad areas of the digital world, such as social media sites, wikipedia, anonymous chat rooms and even Buzzfeed quizzes. Participants reflected on the negative and positive ways the internet influenced their coming out process, and we encouraged them to share anecdotes of specific ways this process unfolded. Finally, we offered participants the opportunity to add anything they felt was relevant to our research. After gathering our recordings, we determined patterns and commonalities among the interviews to further analyze, which is documented in the following sections.
Coming Out
Our project centers on the process of coming out, but as this idea is somewhat abstract, we asked our participants to define it. In their 2013 Survey of LGBT Americans, The Pew Research Center
defines coming out in stages: when you think you’re not straight, when you are sure you are not straight, when you tell one person, when you tell your family, and when you tell people outside of your close friends and family. These divisions worked for their purpose of collecting data, but our participants came up with more interpretive definitions.
Some people thought of coming out as the evolution that happens within yourself becoming part of your public expression.
Olivia, who identifies as a bisexual woman, phrased it very concisely:
Olivia // coming out as a self-knowledge and sharing with others
Alex, who identifies as a bisexual man, discussed the continuous nature of coming out
“If people don’t assume that you are the sexuality that you are, you have to constantly explain it… [coming out] is not something that should be a thing but it is, unfortunately.”
Henry talked about the early moments of coming out as an partially internal process
Henry // coming out as self-acceptance
Tess focused explicitly on coming out as the moment of telling another person.
Tess // coming out as communication
For Jessie, the biggest part of coming out was telling her parents
“I just went downstairs and I just told them, I felt like I couldn’t keep it in any longer, I felt like I was going to explode in that moment if I didn’t say anything. So I just stood there, right in the kitchen in front of both of them and was just like “I’m bisexual,” and then it was just deafening silence.”
Ava thought about coming out as being able to be open with everyone, as a totality.
Ava // coming out as a wholescale
Some participants rejected the concept of coming out all together, or expressed disappointment that it was something that LGBTQ+ people have to do.
In this clip, Sam, who identifies as a bisexual transgender man, discusses fear around coming out even though his family was accepting.
Sam // coming out as nerve-wracking, even in supportive environments
Here, Hugo, who identifies as a bisexual cisgender man, challenges the idea of “having to” come out, and gives his definition of it.
Hugo // on heteronormativity and being "straight until proven otherwise"
This has been a topic of much cultural and academic discussion. To come out is to acknowledge that you are different from the norm, which can be celebrated or resented. Unfortunately, coming out can also open people a barrage of personal questions. The author Richard Morgan wrote about the pressure of the “straight expectations” around coming out, saying,
“This is the trap of coming out, the way it squirms under the weight of straight expectations. Coming out is embraced only as otherness, a kind of queerientalism, a wonderland. But I refuse to serve in this brave new world as other people’s cartographers or their tour guide. In all these moments of put-upon diplomacy, of my involuntary summons as straight people’s wokeness concierge, my interrogators have almost never put any effort into their curiosity before unloading it on me. Because it’s not about learning my truths; it’s about fitting their scripts.” (Morgan 2019)
Some LGBTQ+ people see coming out as beautiful, subversive, and courageous. Others see it as an ordeal forced on to people who are “different” by a society infatuated with normality. Our participants articulated that the first time they came out was a big deal— either positively or negatively or both, but since then it has become more of a slightly annoying obligation. However, this is reflective of the fact that we only interviewed people who had already come out to nearly every person they felt like they should.
Tess talked about constantly having to come out to new people
Tess // coming out as a daily practice rather than a grand gesture
Other people reflected humorously on their coming out process. To laugh at the fear or confusion of your younger self is to take back some power, to show that you have come through on the other side as a more confident person.
Kade // on being "accused of lesbianism" in grade school
Hugo // knowing he wasn't straight, but not being sure what else there was
Sam // on not being able to stick with one label, adopting many over time
As Dehaan et al.
found in their study of online versus offline explorations of identity, many LGBTQ+ youth found the internet eased
communication in the coming out process, allowing them to be removed from emotional, face-to-face reactions.
We heard similar testimonies from our participants, and many used the internet or digital resources when they
came out. For some people, this was as simple as sending a text instead of confronting someone in person.
When coming out to his dad, Sam used a presentation about pansexuality that he found online.
Sam // on using resources found online to come out and explain his unconventional label
Social media is also a tool to come out to people en masse.
Drew // using insta stories to come out to relatives casually, rather than forcing a conversation
To make things simpler, Kade sent out a video saying they were gay to a group chat of all of their friends
Kade // on using a video to come out, being less awkward or confrontational
In conclusion, our participants had a variety of perspectives on what it meant to come out, and a few of them used the internet to help them directly in that process.
Research Behavior + Resource Seeking
When we asked people about their early LGBTQ+ oriented internet activity, they often characterized it as very research oriented. For some, this was an extension of more general online behavior-- going down the curiosity rabbithole on wikipedia and the like. But for most, search engines provided a space to ask questions you didn’t want to ask elsewhere. Some first discovered their labels online, and researched different identities, trying to find what fit them best.
Tess // on using google to research identities + figure out their own
Hugo // finding information on wikipedia easier than asking questions to people directly
Other questions took a more ethical turn. For those brought up in a more LGBTQ-hostile environment,
questions such as “is being gay okay?” or concerning religous stances on homosexual attraction and
trans identities were common. Jessie reflected on her own early research activity, admitting:
"I would even search things like, 'What's wrong with me? Why do I feel this way?"
Alex frequently used the internet to stay on top of political issues and current events:
"I researched more, like, political debates. Certain things were happening like Supreme Court decisions legalizing gay
marriage, or like, when Donald Trump became president.
I'd research the news about it, see different opinions about it, what the current debates were about LGBT rights."
When discussing research behavior, some people reflected on the quality of the resources they found as closeted youth.
While finding resources did help clarify their personal experiences, several people also recognized the risk of bad
sources being encountered by impressionable, closeted young people,
Drew // importance of distinguishing good and bad sources, especially for vulnerable, closeted youth
One participant even rejected such online research processes, believing no googling, quizzes, or any question-answer online resources would be accurate to her own experience
Olivia // not using the internet to ask questions, preferring self-discovery
On the other hand, one interviewee felt optimistic. They recognized a history of flaws in online LGBTQ+ resources, but also felt that, as LGBTQ+ youth have grown into their identities and come out, they’ve taken matters into their own hands, creating more nuanced and more supportive information for those still questioning
Tess // on LGBTQ+ youth's proactivity in gradually bettering available online resources
Representation
Seeing LGBTQ+ representation is extremely important and impactful to people who are figuring out their sexuality and gender. Representation comes in many forms: in television, movies, and books as fictional characters, sports idols, celebrities, or can be as simple as having a teacher or a relative who is not straight or cisgender. A lack of representation perpetuates heteronormativity, while representation done right– even in small doses– can raise acceptance and understanding of LGBTQ+ people. A 2015 study by the Broadcast Education Association found that heterosexual people were more accepting of “gay equality” after watching several hours of television that included gay characters. Representation is especially meaningful to questioning or closeted teenagers (or even younger people), as it offers a way of understanding confusing feelings and normalizes LGBTQ+ identities, therefore reducing their fear and feelings of ostracism. Unfortunately, LGBTQ+ characters are woefully underrepresented in TV and movies. Consequently, many of our participants were first exposed to LGBTQ+ representation and other content online.
Youtube has become a much more accessible platform for LGBTQ+ representation. In this clip, Olivia talks about the impact that Hayley Kiyoko music videos had on her when she was figuring out her sexuality.
Olivia // on how music videos showed her there are "different routes" she could take, when her
real life lacked LGBTQ+ representation
Participants also discussed seeking out media that they knew had LGBTQ+ characters.
Tess // upon feeling comfortable in their identity, sought out LGBTQ+ oriented media online
Tess’s perception that the media was not as representative of LGBTQ+ people ten years ago as it is now is accurate. According to GLAAD,
characters who were LGBT made up only 1% of all regular characters on television in 2007,
but today that figure is 10%.
The proportion of LGBT people of color has also increased from 15% (only three characters) to 50%.
In this clip, Olivia talks about what it meant to see LGBTQ+ characters in television and movies, specifically the movie Love, Simon.
Olivia // on various inclusive movies and shows and their positive impact on her coming out process
Other participants witnessed LGBTQ+ representation and content through more informal settings, such as through internet forums.
Alex:
“I went on Reddit a lot, because there were a lot of people who talked about their experiences on reddit, and it was also very comforting
to me when I hadn’t told anyone, to see different stories. I mean I don’t know if all the stories on Reddit are even true, but regardless
it was nice to read.”
Witnessing the normality of LGBTQ+ people on the internet in casual, indirect ways, also ameliorated the coming out process for Ava as well.
Ava // on the normalization of representation on the internet and social media
Digital media and internet platforms have improved LGBTQ+ representation across the board, which has led to increased public acceptance and clearly makes a difference to questioning LGBTQ+ youth as well.
Public Anonymity
However, the web is not only a place to encounter resources, representation, and LGBTQ-oriented media. It is also a virtual space where LGBTQ+ youth exist actively, creating their own content, interacting with others, and expressing themselves.
Many academics have argued that the web provides a unique opportunity for self-expression, as it brings together the social connectivity of public space, while also allowing anonymity
(Szulc & Dhoest). In the words of Sherry Turkle, the internet can serve as a “social laboratory,” where LGBTQ+ youth can test out their identities with relatively fewer risks, before taking the greater step of claiming their identity proudly offline. This phenomenon was reflected in some of our interviewee’s experiences.
Tess // Coming out online as a healthy middle step, allowing graduality and greater comfort than the 'all or nothing' of the offline world
Drew // Internet does the 'hand-holding' until you're ready to share your true self with the offline world
For trans and gender minority youth especially, social networks provided an opportunity to ease into new gender presentations and pronouns, seeing how it felt without risking social ostracization.
Tess // using twitter as an anonymous space to try out different prounouns and gauge comfort in alternate gender identities, without the typical social consequences
Jessie first came out in anonymous, temporary chat rooms (Bla Therapy).
Being able to vent about identity issues and express her sexuality online provided a safe alternative to a LGBTQ+ hostile homelife.
"The whole idea of this site [...] was that there was one person that was the venter and one person that was the listener.
So that was weird, the chat doesn't even work anymore, but at one point there actually was people that wanted to listen.
Honestly sometimes before they could really respond, I would just actually exit the chat. It just kind of felt good to like,
express it, I guess. Like expressing my sexuality, or even just stating it on the internet, sometimes felt like that was a move.
Like I was putting myself out there."
Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that the web is never as perfectly anonymous as it seems. As Alexander Cho found in his 5 year cyberethnografic study,
certain social media platforms, most noteably facebook, are structured in a way that creates "default publicness." Such platforms are designed to "hyperpriviledg[e] extant offline networks, hewing strictly to state-validated identity,
making the communication archive as readable and traversable as possible, and even broadcasting one’s actions to one’s networks without one’s knowledge." Cho found that queer youth of color were well aware of this fact,
and even those that carefully moderated their behavior on these sites often ended up "outed by the machine," and some faced serious real world consequences. Our interviewees
were also aware of this risk. Some recollected that, before coming out, they were extremely cautious, even hypervigilant about interaction with LGBT+ oriented media, lest
it be traced back to them or seen by someone they knew personally.
Henry // vigilance about all data and online activity, even non-LGBTQ-oriented content, resulting from habitual secrecy
Alex also reflected on this cautious, even paranoid, behavior:
"I was like, super super paranoid, like I would never like any LGBT thing or page on Facebook, because I thought if people
saw that I liked it, they'd think that I am [LGBT], and that I would reveal myself. So I never did any of that... I wouldn't
even change my profile picture to the rainbow flag. I think there was one time when people were changing them. But I didn't do
that even though I knew many many straight people who did it, but they, like, didn't have to convince anyone they were straight.
So yeah privately I'd do the sexuality quizes but publically I'd make sure there was no trace that I was ever queer. But, I
think after I came out, well nothing much necessarially changed, but I think now I'm more comfortable liking pages, like my
local centers for LGBT youth or a support group"
Other people mentioned adapting behavior on different platforms, directly related to varying levels of anonymity on each one. On platforms such as instagram and facebook, which tend towards
default publicness, LGBTQ+ youth tend to exercise more discretion or inhibit their self-expression. On platforms that connect users with strangers, such as tumblr, twitter or tiktok, they feel more anonymous and at ease.
In tumblr's case, Cho would argue rightfully so, as "it evades indexing; it privileges affective and evocative exchange of imagery and the cultivation of a sensibility rather than
giving primacy to literal interaction." Leniency and less data tracking make tumblr a comparatively safer space for LGBTQ+ youth.
A good example of this varying comfort level and privacy expectations is pronoun inclusion in bios. On which socials do you share your pronouns in your profile’s biography section, and on which do you not?
Tess // omission of some pronouns on social media (instagram) that overlaps with multiple offline social circles
Community + Interpersonal Connection
Another important aspect of self-expression and identity formation online is community and interpersonal connection.
While representation can serve a need for visibility, showing that your identity exists and is valid, relation is another matter. LGBTQ+ youth have a need to connect with people who share their experiences. Such connections can be difficult to create in real life, where youth may not personally know other LGBTQ+ folks. Thus, the web’s unique ability to defy geographic boundaries and limited, offline social networks, and social media algorithms’ capacity for connecting those with common interests, can help LGBTQ+ youth find one another and build supportive relationships.
Ava // Tik Tok algorithm's ability to help LGBTQ+ youth connect with their peers, especially with less common identities
Sam // on the value of internet friends who share and understand the LGBTQ+ experience
Even those who came out in more supportive environments speculated that if their situation had been more isolated or hostile, they likely would have turned to the internet as well.
Henry // on the importance of a large, diverse environment for coming out and the internets capacity to fulfill that role
Jessie noted that the internet allowed her to realize that there were other people out there experiencing
the same feeling she was, and connect with them.
“I definitely think the internet helped because I was not raised in a family that ever talked about that, like we don’t talk about touchy subjects
in any case, like I never even got the sex talk from my parents… [the internet] really helped me organize my ideas and to know that what I felt wasn’t wrong, and it helped me gain confidence…
the internet helped me figure out terms and know that there were other people that were also bisexual. In 8th grade, I met someone on wattpad and we would talk on kik. She was a lesbian and I was like
“do tell me about that, like females, how do you feel about liking girls, all of that. It was very interesting, I learned about stereotypes
and she was like “yeah, I just really like girls…” just telling me about her experiences, and I was like wow, I feel that to a degree.”
Nevertheless, some interviewees talked about hesitation regarding online LGBTQ+ communities. One person expressed concerns about an echo-chamber-esque phenomenon, stating that LGBT+ communities on Tumblr in particular had very narrow, moralistic cultures
Sam // on the moral black and whites of certain online LGBTQ+ environments
Another participant mentioned labeling culture on tumblr, arguing that the hyperspecificity of identities and the pressure to adopt one were unhealthy.
Kade // the pressure on tumblr to adopt a hyperspecific label
Kade also metioned an overlap of LGBTQ+ culture and self-harm and eating disorder groups, which, rather than addressing unhealthy behavior, simply accepted and modeled it.
Analysis + Conclusion
The results of our interviews were in many ways typical within the broader scope of discourse on LGBTQ+ presence online. The experiences each individual brought up were similar to those found in various other ethnographic studies. These similarities ranged from general patterns of behavior, such as researching (DeHaan), to platform differentiation, such as using facebook vs. tumblr (Cho).
One interesting way our participants’ experiences deviated from the assumptions of pre-existing literature was the comparative interaction rate with LGBTQ+ oriented media before versus after coming out offline. While Szulc & Dhoest’s research found that LGB folks (or holebis) tend to interact relatively more with LGBTQ+ related content before coming out in their offline life. They attribute this to compensation for closeted behavior in daily life. Since self-expression cannot be claimed offline, it is channelled through the anonymous outlet of the web, in a more condensed form.
However, our interviewees showed different patterns of behavior. Alex, Henry, Olivia and Tess reported (clearly if not explicitly) that their interaction with LGBTQ+ oriented content and spaces increased after they began their offline coming out process. This can be connected to two phenomena. Firstly, as Alexander Cho noted, and as Alex and Henry expressed, the default-publicness of certain online spaces and social media platforms create risks of inadvertent self-outing, as algorithms may associate your profile with LGBTQ+ content, or may even explicitly share your interactions with queer content with your followers. Secondly, there’s the more internal matter of comfort with LGBTQ+ media. Tess specifically expressed that, before coming out, they avoided LGBTQ+ oriented media due to a feeling of ‘taboo,’ and, after coming out, they now seek out LGBTQ+ content actively, since they feel they can fully enjoy it, without any internalized guilt.
In short, while certain studies indicated a decrease in LGBTQ+ oriented online behavior after coming out offline, our findings show the inverse.
As we conceptualized this project, we relied heavily on our own experiences on the internet in order to formulate our key question: to what extent does the use of online anonymity and digital spaces facilitate the coming out process for LBGTQ+ youth? Although we strove for unbiased, open-minded research, our question is still essentially leading. It implies that the internet does play a facilitator role in the coming out process, and that online anonymity would be a major factor. Throughout our interviews, we uncovered many additional links between the internet and the coming out process, as well as negative impacts that we had not necessarily considered based on our personal experiences. The opportunity to have online anonymity was a central part of the coming out process for some of our interviewees (Jessie, Ava, Tess, Alex), but for others it was not a factor at all (Olivia, Drew, Hugo, Kade, Sam, Henry). Instead other factors, such as resources, representation and interpersonal connections, had a greater impact than anonymity. Overall, the testimonies raised more questions for us, especially about the myriad uses of social media, the ways people discovered and experimented with labels they saw online, and the existence of informal representation of LGBTQ+ online.
