Journal Club: The Value of Social Media for Queer Youth
In 2022, a paper investigated the effects of social media on queer youth. Overuse of social media still may not be healthy, but for queer youth there are some unique benefits.
by Veronica Esposito
The use of social media by youths has been the subject of much debate lately, with many decrying websites and apps as compromising their mental health. For instance, in the bestselling The Anxious Generation, author Jonathan Haidt directly calls out social media for surging rates of anxiety and depression. At a governmental level, the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act (KOSA) seeks to legislate supposed fixes to make social media less harmful for those under 18.
Yet, others have taken the opposite view of social media. Podcaster Michael Hobbes offered a thorough takedown of Haidt’s arguments, and institutions like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU have offered thorough critiques of KOSA. Founded in 1990 and based in San Francisco, the EFF is a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights in Internet spaces through litigation and other forms of advocacy.
In 2022, researcher Matthew Berger and colleagues attempted to bring some clarity to the question of youths and social media by conducting a systematic review of studies examining how social media impacts the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ youth.
“Systematic review” is just a fancy word that means pulling together a bunch of studies on the same topic to assess their validity and see if they agree or disagree. Researchers first form a research question and then seek out as many papers as they can find that address the relevant topic. Once they have the papers, they analyze their validity while synthesizing the research findings into some coherent statements. Their breadth, depth, and rigor make systematic reviews some of the most authoritative forms of evidence on a given topic.
In conducting their review, Berget et al. defined “youth” as people age 10 through 24, and they looked for papers examining any part of the LGBTQ+ spectrum published after 2012. Overall, they found 26 studies matching their criteria, and they grouped their findings within three categories: Connecting With Other LGBTQ Youths on Social Media, LGBTQ Identity Development Using Social Media, and Social Support on Social Media.
Although the results were nuanced, on balance, this systematic review found that social media is good for LGBTQ+ youth. Among the major findings was that social media use among LGBTQ youth was consistent with a “reduction in mental illness symptoms, including anxiety, depression, and paranoia.” They also found that social media was an important support for this demographic because it was a space where they could “control the expression of their sexual and gender identities to prevent or reduce exposure to stigma and discrimination.” This helped these youth to build communities they otherwise would not have had. In this, LGBTQ+ youths differed from their straight counterparts, who the researchers found did not need to use social media to express identities or build safe communities.
Berger et al. did find some downsides to social media use. These included feelings of loneliness among heavy users as well as reduced academic performance, sleep deprivation, and reduced mental health among those classified as “dependent on social media.” However, in spite of these findings they did conclude that, overall, the evidence showed that social media was beneficial to the mental health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ youth.
Digging deeper into the findings, Berget et al. found that a big appeal of social media was the opportunity it offered for youth to connect with others anonymously. This allowed users to exert greater control over various levels of being out and to try on different identities without having to imperil face-to-face relationships. The omnipresence of social media was also an asset, as it allowed users to seek out support whenever needed, and also provided a ready outlet for self-expression when none other was available.
Social media was also found to be a particular lifeline for LGBTQ+ youth in rural and remote areas, as they tend to have a harder time connecting with like-minded community. Users found it to be an asset for seeking out “advice on dating, safety, sex, identity disclosure, and sexuality.” And, interestingly, the research found that connecting with LGBTQ+ celebrities via social media fostered a sense of belonging and boosted mental health.
Things like online forums, blogs, and videos where LGBTQ+ youth could share first hand experiences helped other youth work through their own identity confusion, developing a stronger sense of self-understanding and self-acceptance. In that way, these spaces seemed to operate like virtual support groups. These spaces helped trans youth in particular acquire knowledge around gender-related transitions—they could connect directly with other trans people who had made medical transitions and could obtain in-depth medical information.
Readers are encouraged to examine the paper for themselves, as it offers brief summaries of all included studies and thus provides a rich trove of granular details on how LGBTQ+ youth are actively using social media to boost resilience.
These findings highlight how recent policy changes by major social networks will almost certainly harm LGBTQ+ youth. For instance, many studies found that Twitter (now known as X) was a significant source of support for this demographic—likely, now that Twitter has become a hostile place for LGBTQ+ individuals, where hate-accounts are boosted and hate-speech is normalized, this lifeline has been greatly eroded. Similarly, with fact-checking removed and slurs against trans people now being legitimized across all of Meta’s platforms (which include Facebook and Instagram), these sites are almost certainly less helpful as support spaces than they were at the time of this study.
All in all, Berger et al. offer refreshing nuance to the conventional wisdom that social media is a net negative for youth. Heading into an era where there is the great likelihood of misinformation, changes to long standing policies, and fraying of social supports for LGBTQ+ people in general, it demonstrates the value of forging ties via smartphone and computer. While these ties cannot replace face-to-face, “real-life” community support, they can be an important lifeline when those things are lacking, or are completely unavailable. In this era, youth need every support they can get, and this is a significant one.
Veronica Esposito (she/her) is a writer and therapist based in the Bay Area. She writes regularly for The Guardian, Xtra Magazine, and KQED, the NPR member station for Northern California, on the arts, mental health, and LGBTQ+ issues.