Facebook: More Americans Coming Out On Social Network

Yesterday, Facebook released some data in honor of Spirit Day and National Coming Out Day revealing that the social network has seen more Americans than ever coming out on the site. The company determined this using information about U.S Facebook users, using things like users' specifying a custom gender on a profile, or using the profile to "express a same-gender attraction." When looked at, the data then shows three large trends taking place.

The graph below shows how many Americans have used Facebook to come out since last year's National Coming Out Day — though it dipped briefly a couple times, it ultimately has seen a massive upswing. And, as you probably see, there's one spot where the numbers jump astronomically. That is June 26, the day the Supreme Court ruled for marriage equality.

In that case — the June 26 spike — Facebook saw the number of people coming out jump more than 250-percent over October 2014. Overall, says Facebook, 800,000 US users have expressed some sort of custom gender or same-gender attraction on their profile. The number of users in the US coming out is also still on the climb, and if the trend holds, next year will set a new milestone.

Facebook tries to paint a picture with the data, making it easier to digest. One such way is this: a "normal" day sees one out of every 10 US users changing their profile in such a way that qualifies as "coming out". All in all, the social network says in excess of 6 million US users have used the social network to come out, at least based on the criteria it uses.

SOURCE: Facebook