Over the last week, many Facebook users have shown support for marriage equality as two high-profile cases get underway at the US Supreme Court. They’ve done so in a simple yet instantly noticeable way; by substituting their usual profile photo for a pink-on-red equal sign designed by the Human Rights Campaign.
”It’s the simple acts that help create one big movement to become successful and that’s really the goal of this whole thing,” West Fargo student Skylar Thompson said.
Facebook is chiming in with some hard numbers on just how widespread the movement has become. Facebook says that on March 26th, roughly 2.7 million more people updated their profile photo compared with the week prior, an increase of 120 percent. That means a total of about four million users out of an estimated 160 to 180 million users in the US changed their profile pictures last Tuesday. The trend has even seemed to garner support from the conservative state of North Dakota with roughly one eighth of the state’s population showing their support on Facebook. A simple glance through the profiles of West Fargo students shows the support beginning to spread throughout the high school as well.
High school senior Kym Ross was able to find a voice for herself through the social networking movement.
“I became involved by just standing up for myself, since I am bisexual, and by giving others a voice that they may be too afraid to use,” Ross said.
A press release issued by Eytan Bskshy, who works on Facebook’s data science team, shows that Facebook has also begun to break down results by age.
“Those closest to 30 years old showed the greatest increase in updating,” Bskshy said, estimating that around 3.5 percent of 30-year-olds updated their profiles in direct response to the same-sex campaign.
And finally, the company’s researchers wanted to see how the numbers panned out geographically. For this overview, they looked at the entire country county-by-county. College neighborhoods showed the biggest jump in profile changes, with the trend extending to San Francisco, Washington DC, and even right here in North Dakota.
“I have friends who go to Concordia who are actively involved in the equal rights in marriage movement,” Thompson said. “They are constantly posting things on Facebook about what they’re doing or what someone else is doing, so it’s how I’m kept updated on things.”
Beyond the demonstration of Facebook’s wide reach, the increasing support for the movement using social media shows the dedication and hope for the social cause the movement speaks to.
“In all I really hope this entire thing makes at least the youth of America realize that just because a man loves another man or a woman loves another woman doesn’t mean they are a bad person,” Ross said. “It means that they are brave enough to stand up for who they love no matter all the hardships it brings. That is honestly everything I hope to accomplish with all I’m doing to help.”