SNS Use and Sexuality 1 A Tool for Help or Harm ? Associations between Sexual Minority Youth

With the increasing popularity of social networking sites, research has begun to investigate the implications for youth development, with concern for possible negative effects on their relationships and well-being. But for youth who feel somewhat marginalized, these sites could be important sources of social support. Accordingly, our study sought to examine the relations between sexual minority youth’s social networking site use and their social support, sexual identity strength, and mental health. We conducted an online survey, sampling 146 sexual minority youth respondents (M = 21 years; SD=2.87 years) and 476 heterosexual youth respondents (M = 20 years; SD=2.76 years). Results indicated that although both sexual minority and heterosexual youth use social networking sites at equal rates, sexual minority youth indicated that they use the sites more for each of our identity development and social communication motives. At the same time, neither frequency of use nor number of sites used was as strongly related to sexual minority youth’s mental health as were their reasons for using the sites. Specifically, using sites for identity expression or exploration predicted negative mental health outcomes, whereas using sites for sexual identity work predicted positive mental health outcomes. These results provide us with greater insight into how social networking sites may be affecting the mental health of marginalized groups, and open up questions as to why differences in social networking site experiences between sexual minority and heterosexual youth exist.