There's a reason why queer folks are turning to online spaces like Snapchat and Tumblr

As my once-beloved Twitterverse crumbles around me—even the name “Twitter” lopped down to “er” before finishing its metamorphosis into the nondescript X—the push to new platforms continues. Personally, I’ve joined the throngs of users seeking a new social media home. While Meta’s Threads left me confused, no one I know has yet to migrate to Mastodon, and when it comes to Bluesky, well … I’m still waiting to be let in.  Through the shifting social media landscape, I’ve found the renewed interest in older platforms—platforms that I’d relegated to my own digital past—to be strangely comforting. I’m not the only one. Writing for Yahoo! Finance, for instance, journalist Samantha Delouya observed that there’s a correlation between Musk’s Twitter takeover and user growth for the microblogging service Tumblr. Erin Griffith noted similar trends for the photo and video-sharing platform Snapchat in an article for the New York Times.  The really interesting thing about this growth is that it’s largely a result of young users joining these platforms even while older ones are aging out and moving on. According to a Pew Research Center study, 59 percent of teens commonly use Snapchat. Tumblr reported similar numbers, stating that 48 percent of its
Read More