The benefits of technology: Gay people are everywhere now
One problem I have with technology is that every lunatic in the world now has the ability to find like-minded dimwits and spread his or her conspiracy theories around the globe. Thanks to Facebook, QAnon has become a global phenomenon that endangers democracy and public safety. And flat-earthers now have many more members than ten years ago thanks to YouTube.
And while I have difficulty finding anything positive about social media at all as I have expressed here, here, here, here, and here, there seems to be at least some redeeming benefit. Alan Collins and Stephen Drinkwater examined why homosexual people traditionally live in distinctive neighbourhoods in big cities. Historically, gay and lesbian people were not accepted by mainstream society and it was difficult to come out of the closet if you lived in a village in rural England. The best thing one could do was to move to a neighbourhood where there were already many openly gay and lesbian people and where this lifestyle was more accepted. Thus, liberal cities were the destination of choice and within those cities neighbourhoods where other homosexual people lived that provide a support network and made it easier to find life partners, etc.
But over the last two decades, two things happened. First attitudes towards alternative lifestyles changed. The formerly intolerant suburbs and countryside villages have come to accept homosexuality as normal or at least not wrong. The share of people across the UK that finds homosexual relationships ‘always wrong’ has dropped everywhere to similar levels as in inner-city London and is now largely limited to people with conservative religious beliefs. And second, the internet and social media have made it easier for people with alternative lifestyles to find other people like them. There is no need anymore to move to expensive inner-city flats and pay exorbitant rents. You can socialise and find life partners via apps online and meet wherever you want.
These two developments are likely mutually reinforcing. As more gay and lesbian people live in suburbs and rural villages, locals get to know them and reduce their resentments. Over time, people with alternative lifestyles become more and more accepted until they become normality. By the way, the same tends to happen with immigrants. The more racially diverse a city or region is, the fewer natives fear immigration. In the United States, this leads to strange racism maps where fear of immigration is highest in areas that are farther away from the Mexican border and where natives in areas with more immigrants respond that immigrants strengthen their communities.
Acceptance of homosexuality in the UK
Source: Collins and Drinkwater (2021).