Understanding the Power of Social Media during COVID-19: Forming Social Norms for Drinking among Sexual Minority...

Social media serves as a key mechanism for sexual minority young adults to connect with peers and to learn about COVID-19. We utilized focus groups to explore how sexual minority gender expansive college women (N= 28) engage with social media, including alcohol-related content on social networking sites. Two focus groups were held in-person during the month before the campus closed on March 10, 2020 due to a shelter-in-place mandate. Focus groups were then moved online, and also assessed how engagement with social media, including alcohol-related content, changed in response to COVID-19 at one month and two months into shelter-in-place. Using social media to connect with sexual and gender minority (SGM) content and community was a prominent theme across the three cohorts of data collection. Social drinking via social networking sites became increasingly prominent during shelter-in-place as a way to combat isolation, boredom, and the general stress of coping with COVID-19.