For One Group of Teenagers, Social Media Seems a Clear Net Benefit
The surgeon general’s warning Tuesday about social media’s “profound risk of harm” to young people included a significant qualification.
For some of them, the warning said, social media can be beneficial to health in important ways. For one group in particular — the growing share of young people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer — social media can be a lifeline, researchers and teenagers say.
Especially for those growing up in unwelcoming families or communities, social media often provides a sense of identity and belonging at a crucial age, much earlier than for many L.G.B.T.Q.
people in previous generations. “It’s a lifeline for folks to receive information and to really see that they are not alone, and there are so many people like them,” said Jessica Fish, who studies L.G.B.T.Q.
