People who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (LGBTQ) are more likely to have bad mental health and well-being. Social media platforms can give LGBTQ youth a place to go that is different from heteronormative settings and could help with their mental health and well-being. Mental health is more than just the lack of mental disorders. It also includes a person’s psychological and emotional well-being.
Objective:
We wanted to find out how LGBTQ teens and young adults use social media to connect with other LGBTQ people and groups, develop their identities, and get social support, as well as how these things affect their mental health and well-being.
Methods:
This review was based on the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines. In March 2021, searches were done in the ACM Digital Library, the CINAHL, the Ovid Embase, the Ovid MEDLINE, and the Web of Science. This review was mostly about LGBTQ young people ages 10 to 24. Peer-reviewed studies that are included must look at peer connections, identity development, or social support, and they must have been published after 2012. In total, 2 researchers used the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme for qualitative articles and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for quantitative articles to evaluate the quality of the articles on their own. Articles that met the eligibility criteria were put through a qualitative synthesis.
Results:
There were 26 studies that met the criteria (n=15, 58% qualitative, n=8, 31% quantitative, and n=3, 12% mixed methods). Six of the eight quantitative studies were cross-sectional (75%) and two were cohort studies (25%). All of the studies were of fair to good quality. LGBTQ youth often used social media to connect with other LGBTQ people and groups.
We learned from qualitative data that LGBTQ youth explored their identities and got help from their peers on social media. Because it was easy to stay anonymous on Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter, LGBTQ content was often found there. Most research was done on the ability to manage one’s identity on social media, which is important for LGBTQ youths who want to come out in a strategic way.
Being anonymous, censoring locations or content, limiting audiences, and using multiple accounts were all important ways to handle identities. Three out of eight quantitative studies (38%) showed that LGBTQ youth who used social media were less worried about their mental health and had a better sense of well-being. People who use social media have mental health problems because of discrimination, being picked on, and policies that don’t work with changing identities.
Conclusions:
We found that social media may help LGBTQ youths’ mental health and well-being by connecting them with peers, helping them manage their identities, and giving them social support. However, the evidence was not very strong, so we can’t be sure. More in-depth and long-term studies are needed to figure out the link between social media use and the mental health of LGBTQ people, especially among teens. The results could be used to help this vulnerable group learn more about social media health literacy and improve their mental health and well-being.
