More than 6 million Americans have come out on Facebook since it was founded in 2004, including 800,000 within the last year alone, the social network announced in a report released Oct. 15.
In the report, Facebook defined coming out as either changing a profile to show same-sex attraction or using the tool released in 2014 that allows users to customize their gender to reflect their gender identity.
Facebook reports the increase in the number and rate of people coming out can be attributed to the public’s increased support of the LGBT community and the Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality, the celebration of which led to a huge growth in profile changes the day of.
“On a typical day, one out of every ten people who change their “interested in” status on Facebook do so to reflect a same-gender interest. On the day of the Supreme Court ruling, this ratio was double, one out of every five people,” the report states. “Additionally, in the days following the June 26 Supreme Court decision, we saw more than 26 million people display a rainbow filter on their profile picture.”
LGBT fan pages have also increased by 25 percent in the last year, according to the report.
