Every child and teen deserves safe places both online and offline to find connection, friendship and support. While this should ALWAYS be the case, Pride Month offers the opportunity to not only celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, but also to remind EVERYONE EVERYWHERE that it is crucial for LGBTQ+ kids and teens to also have these safe spaces. Queer kids, teens, and adults all deserve it.

According to The Trevor Project’s 2025 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People, LGBTQ+ young people who reported living in very accepting communities attempted suicide at less than a third of the rate of those in very unaccepting communities. Depending on their school and familial environment, as well as the kind of social support available to them, LGBTQ+ youth may not always find these beneficial and supportive connections in-person and thus turn to the digital world.

And sometimes LGBTQ+ youth do find vital communities and accurate, life-changing information online. In particular, in states where accurate sex education isn’t mandated, let alone sex ed that is comprehensive and relevant to queer people, some sex educators have taken to online platforms to offer inclusive advice and information. And if a queer child is told by everyone in their offline life that being gay is a choice, or that there’s something wrong with them, or—as so many LGBTQ+ youth are—kicked out of their homes simply for being who they are, connecting online with others who understand can be incredibly healing.  

We know all too well, however, that greedy tech companies have created and heavily marketed products that are not designed to protect kids and teens, but instead destroy lives. And while LGBTQ+ kids and teens are just seeking community and connection online, predators are seeking them. Because companies have chosen profit over safety, these online communities have turned into hunting grounds for adults seeking to prey on vulnerable youth. 

Stats show that LGBTQ+ youth and teens are at an increased risk for online harassment and tech-facilitated sexual violence:

  • 76% of transgender individuals report being harassed online (Gardner, 2024); 
  • 91% of LGBTQ+ youth report that they believe that grooming online is at least somewhat common (Thorn, 2023); 
  • Over 50% of cisgender non-heterosexual male teens have been sent nude photos they did not ask to receive, compared to 26% of their cisgender heterosexual male peers (Thorn, 2023).

And LGBTQ+ kids and teens experience high rates of depression and suicide (Source: The Trevor Project):

  • 36% of LGBTQ+ young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including 40% of transgender and nonbinary young people; 
  • 1 in 10 LGBTQ+ young people attempted suicide in the past year; 
  • 47% of LGBTQ+ young people reported experiencing recent symptoms of depression.

Accepting, affirming communities are necessary for the well-being and mental health of LGBTQ+ kids and teens, and we know that for many, these communities aren’t accessible in person.  And so, they go online. And what should be an affirming, supportive experience too often results in immeasurable, yet preventable, harm to these young people.

We have seen firsthand working with our clients how some online platforms turn a blind eye or even knowingly benefit from the harms occurring on their platforms and caused by product design that facilitates those harms. For Big Tech, these atrocities are just the cost of doing business. For LGBTQ+ youth, it could be a matter of life and death. Whether facilitating harassment, sexual violence, or suicide, tech companies have little incentive to care about what happens on their platforms, so long as they’re making a profit. And this is by design.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 created sweeping protections for online service providers during an era in which it would have been impossible to predict the omnipresence and sprawl of online services into our day-to-day lives. This blanket immunity now has the perverse effect of removing any incentive for tech platforms to act when they know or should know that people are being harmed on their platforms, even when that harm is easily preventable.

Instead of investing in making their products safer, Big Tech puts a staggering amount of time and money into propaganda to persuade online communities that Section 230 protects the speech and privacy of users, especially those in the LGBTQ+ community.

As Senior Associate Katie McKay puts it:

It’s been interesting for me, as a proudly out gay woman and an attorney at this firm fighting for accountability for Big Tech, to see the Section 230 debate take the shape of a stark either-or problem: privacy for LGBTQ+ people, or accountability for Big Tech. For me, those two aren’t in opposition at all. 

When Big Tech injures people, especially queer people, that undermines the dignity and sexual privacy of those people. The solution is not to say, ‘well, this is how it has to be if we want privacy online.’ The solution is that those companies must pay for the harm they caused by their own negligence or recklessness.

Reminder: the reality is that Section 230 is what tech companies use as their “get-out-of-jail-free card” to avoid liability for facilitating online abuse. So Big Tech continues to evade accountability for what’s happening on its platforms. Worse, Big Tech has the time, money, and resources to fix their products and protect children and teens but instead chooses to throw the blame back on its victims.

We have seen this dynamic play out in many of our cases where young LGBTQ+ people have suffered at the hands of Big Tech:

  • Doe v. Grindr: Our 15-year-old client growing up in a rural community living with Autism and ADHD downloaded Grindr to meet other like-minded kids. He was swept up by Grindr’s marketing campaigns on TikTok and Instagram that feature gay youth in high school settings and dangle the notions of finding affirming friendships and community on the app. Instead of making peer connections, our client ended up matching with nearby adults and was raped by four adult men over several days. In 2025, we brought this case all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping they would hear it – the first real test of Big Tech’s legal immunity under Section 230. Instead, SCOTUS declined to review our case, closing the door on justice for our client and leaving millions more exposed to the same harm.
  • Herrick v. Grindr: Although LGBTQ+ youth are particularly vulnerable, we have seen that Grindr doesn’t protect anyone on their platform – adults or children. Back in 2017, we filed suit against the dating app on behalf of our client Matthew Herrick, whose ex tormented him by creating fake profiles on Grindr impersonating him and soliciting strangers to come to his home address for violent and degrading sex, leading to several men showing up at his home expecting what they had been promised. Matthew wasn’t even a Grindr user himself. The judge ruled in favor of Grindr, stating that under Section 230, a dating app couldn’t be sued because one of its users harassed someone through the platform, even if the platform knew this was happening and refused to take action.

While being LGBTQ+ encompasses so much more than sex, sex is a meaningful and fulfilling part of many people’s lives and adults of all genders and sexualities should be empowered and entitled to seek out safe, consensual sex. Because Grindr is known to be a hookup app, we feel strongly that if it is going to facilitate in-person encounters for gay people, then it owes a duty to the community to make its platform safer. And it needs to completely shift its business model, which involves purposeful marketing to children and luring the most vulnerable young people to their platform in search of community and acceptance.  

However, this problem is far from unique to Grindr. Many other Big Tech companies act with impunity, with devastating and foreseeable consequences for their users, including young people in the LGBTQ+ community.

  • Taylor Family v. Discord: In February 2026, we filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the social media platform Discord for the death of our clients’ 13-year-old son, Jay Taylor. Discord helped grow and amplify the child sex abuse cult, 764, which was born and thrives on its platform. Members of 764 find and coerce vulnerable children and blackmail them into live-streaming horrific acts of abuse, self-mutilation, and suicide. This includes victims who are members of the LGBTQ+ community. Our clients’ son, Jay, was trans and went online seeking new gay or trans friends when he posted in a Discord server – within hours, he was targeted and manipulated by bad actors in a group chat to livestream his own suicide. 

Discord offers the ability to connect with others with niche interests or common backgrounds or values. And it markets itself to families as a safe space for teens. It makes sense that an LGBTQ+ teenager hoping to find acceptance online would do so on Discord. But with the company’s hands-off approach to moderating servers, predators run amok. 

  • Families v. Amazon: Since February 2022, our firm has brought a total of 10 lawsuits against Amazon.com, Inc., on behalf of the Families of 28 individuals who are now dead due to Amazon’s decision to promote, sell, and home-deliver the suicide chemical sodium nitrite to its vulnerable customers. In our conversations with families, a concerningly high percentage told us their loved one identified as transgender or nonbinary. On February 19, 2026, the Washington Supreme Court reaffirmed the law’s capacity to evolve in a historic 9-0 decision in cases against Amazon for selling suicide poison to the public – Washington law now makes it clear that a victim’s suicide does NOT automatically block liability for selling that person dangerous suicide products.

Queer kids are at an increased risk of suicidality, because of the world we live in. We know this from the data available from organizations like the Trevor Project. We know this from reading the news, where protections for trans and other LGBTQ+ youth seem to be constantly on the chopping block. Amazon knew that vulnerable children were purchasing a suicide chemical to be delivered directly to their door, and it let that continue to happen, allowing more children to die in easily preventable tragedies.

Pride Month is about celebration, love, acceptance, resistance, power, and healing. In June, we are reminded to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, but also to continue fighting for protections and safety, especially for those vulnerable children and teens who just want—and deserve—spaces to exist wholly and freely without the fear of harassment, assault and coercion. And for adults whose sexual privacy is not served by a legal regime that allows platforms to facilitate their abuse with zero recourse.

Everyone deserves to be safe. And until then, we will keep standing up to Big Tech for all of us.

Resources 

LGBTQ Digital Safety Guide from GLAAD 

Online Safety for LGBTQ+ Young People