Resilience frameworks offer us another avenue for understanding data points like those from CARI. As a graduate student at the University of Michigan, I sat in on a guest lecture by Ron Stall, an early pioneer in LGBTQ+ health research, who presented the latest disparity data on LGBTQ+ populations. Across each statistic he shared, we saw yet another benchmark of how public health problems like violence, substance use, and depression disproportionately impacted LGBTQ+ populations. As the audience lurched toward despair, Dr. Stall asked, “What is the other side of the story? Where could we find evidence of the resilience of LGBTQ+ people?”

From there, a rich discussion emerged about how, for each outcome, despite LGBTQ+ folks carrying a greater burden, there remained those LGBTQ+ folks who were not affected at all. No violence. No substance use. No depression. Despite living in the same context, where social stigma against LGBTQ+ people can erode health and well-being through minority stress, every day LGBTQ+ people side-step the fatalistic narrative these statistics provide. When we, as researchers, practitioners, and humans invested in equity, focus solely on who experiences disparities and overlook who does not experience the disparity, we lose sight of the full story.  

So, what is the full story with the CARI data? 

Reflecting on how resilience relates to these findings about TFA and young people invites new avenues for future research. To begin, we might design new studies to investigate where and how LGBTQ+ young adults thrive online despite the near-ubiquitous levels of TFA among the LGBTQ+ young adults in this study. Direct investigation into positive online experiences is particularly critical given that prior research tells us that online communities offer essential sources of identity affirmation and support to many LGBTQ+ youth.  

Situating ourselves in relationship to the full story also means asking important follow-up questions—namely, who is thriving? Or, more specifically, who are the 19 percent of LGBTQ+ youth who never experienced TFA? Emphasizing resilience can inspire us to look at within-group differences among LGBTQ+ young adults. For example, which groups of LGBTQ+ youth report the fewest experiences of TFA? What characteristics or experiences, whether social, interpersonal, or individual, do they have in common? How might these commonalities inform avenues through which online spaces could be improved? 

Certainly, calls to embed resilience frameworks into LGBTQ+ research are not new. In fact, some scholars ask whether resilience is truly enough, given its assumption of overcoming adversity. Alternatively, a truly revolutionary and holistic goal might be fully eradicating oppression and marginalization from queer people’s lives. (See more on these topics from thought leaders and researchers Annaliese Singh and Delia Mosley.) Yet there is value in a renewed commitment to considering resilience in relationship to LGBTQ+ well-being, as the social obstacles toward thriving show no signs of abating.  

In thinking about TFA and how it affects LGBTQ+ people, centering resilience orients us toward strategies for cultivating online spaces that are safe and welcoming for individuals of all identities. What we learn about the mechanism that protects one group of LGBTQ+ people from TFA can be the tool that gets used or scaled to improve the online safety of LGBTQ+ folks across the board. Resilience can lead toward prevention and may be an important tool for researchers and practitioners invested in moving LGBTQ+ closer toward equity.