Revealing Barriers to Identity Exploration Among Sexual Minority Youth in Social Media Environments: A Systematic Literature Review

2.1 Communication privacy management theory

Communication Privacy Management (CPM) Theory, as described by Griffin et al. (2019, pp. 145-155), explains how individuals make decisions to disclose or conceal personal information through the active and ongoing management of privacy boundaries. Developed by Sandra Petronio in 1991 and continually refined through 2002, the theory yields three core concepts relevant to this review. Privacy rules are principles that individuals construct based on their calculations of the risks and benefits of disclosure; for SMY, these rules are systematically tightened by histories of rejection, internalized stigma, and perceptions of unsafe audiences. Co-ownership refers to the condition in which private information is shared with another party who then becomes a co-owner of that information; the risk of unsafe co-ownership leads SMY to avoid disclosure on platforms with undefined audiences. Boundary turbulence occurs when privacy boundaries are violated without consent, producing emotional and relational consequences that cause individuals to restrict themselves further. In digital contexts, context collapse, the collapse of diverse audiences into a single undifferentiated audience, constitutes the most common source of structural boundary turbulence experienced by SMY (Hanckel et al., 2019; Talbot et al., 2022).

2.2 Minority stress theory

Minority Stress Theory (MST; Meyer, 2003) explains why SMY experience greater mental health disparities by locating the root of the problem in disproportionate exposure to social stress arising from stigmatized status. Meyer (2003) distinguished distal stressors, objective external events such as discrimination, victimization, and microaggression, from internalized proximal stressors, including internalized stigma, expectations of rejection, and identity concealment as a form of self-protection. Frost and Meyer (2023) updated this framework with the concept of developmental collision, a condition in which SMY who come out at younger ages are exposed to minority stress precisely at the most developmentally vulnerable stage. In the Indonesian context, this burden operates within a social landscape shaped by religious norms, collectivist family structures, and regional regulations that collectively amplify proximal stressors among adolescents with minority identities (ILGA World, 2024). In this review, MST explains the internal psychological conditions that SMY bring when they enter social media environments and why the privacy rules they construct within the CPM framework tend to be highly selective and restrictive.

2.3 Affordances theory

Affordances Theory in the context of social media explains how digital platforms actively shape the possibilities and constraints of users’ actions, rather than serving as neutral containers for human communication (Gibson, 1977; Bucher & Helmond, 2017). Ronzhyn et al. (2022) defined social media affordances as actual or imagined properties of platforms that emerge from the relations among technological, social, and contextual dimensions, rather than belonging to the technology alone. Consequently, the same platform may feel empowering to one group while simultaneously constraining to another. The concept of imagined affordances, users’ perceptions of a platform’s possibilities and constraints that are not always accurate, explains why the barriers SMY perceive cannot be reduced to technical features alone but must be understood as products of the complex interaction among platform architecture, users’ psychological conditions, and social context. Davis and Chouinard (2016) added the concept of disaffordances, platform properties that structurally impede certain actions, which explains how context collapse and heteronormative algorithmic curation are not mere technical failures but barriers produced by platform design itself.

2.4 The hierarchical relationship among the three theories

The three theories are arranged in a layered hierarchy: MST explains why SMY carry particular internal stress burdens; CPM explains how those burdens are translated into privacy and identity communication decisions; Affordances Theory explains in what medium those decisions are actualized or foreclosed. The relationship among them is mutually constitutive because minority stress shapes the initial psychological condition, that condition determines how privacy rules are constructed within CPM, and platform affordances determine the space in which those privacy rules are applied or violated. This mechanism is circular: platform disaffordances worsen proximal stressors, which in turn drive privacy rules toward greater restrictiveness, producing a deep identity concealment that is difficult to interrupt from any single vantage point. This integrative framework is proposed explicitly for the first time in this review, responding to the theoretical fragmentation that has dominated prior literature, in which most studies employed a single theoretical lens without connecting it to mechanisms operating at other levels.

3.1 Protocol and pre-registration

This review followed PRISMA 2020 guidelines (Page et al., 2021) and a protocol pre-registered at the Open Science Framework (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZF7RT) prior to data collection. The selection of thematic synthesis over meta-analysis was based on substantial heterogeneity in study designs, construct operationalizations, and outcome reporting across included studies. No overlapping reviews were identified following searches of PROSPERO and the Cochrane Database. All supporting data, including the extraction sheet, quality appraisal matrix, thematic coding framework, and search strings, are available in the Supporting Information and publicly accessible via the OSF Repository, as documented in the Data and Software Availability section of this article.

3.2 Information sources

Searches were conducted across Scopus, Web of Science (WoS), and JSTOR, covering publications from January 2016 through April 2026. The 10-year range was selected because it is methodologically well-established in systematic reviews in psychology and communication science (Siddaway et al., 2019) and because 2016 represents a substantive inflection point in algorithmic social media ecology that qualitatively altered the conditions under which SMY identity exploration unfolds (van Dijck et al., 2018; Bucher, 2018). Scopus was selected for its comprehensive coverage of international literature including non-Western regions; WoS ensures inclusivity of literature indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI; Singh et al., 2021); JSTOR captures scholarship from gender studies and critical social science traditions not always fully indexed in the other two databases.

3.3 Search strategy

Search strings were developed using Boolean operators within a Population-Exposure-Outcome (PEO) framework. The PICO framework was not applied because the research question is observational rather than experimental (Khan et al., 2003; Munn et al., 2018). Three clusters were constructed: (1) Population: LGBTQ*, sexual minority, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, transgender; (2) Exposure: homophobia, stigma, hate speech, cyberbullying, harassment, discrimination; (3) Outcome: social media, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, identity exploration, coming out, identity concealment. Full search strings are available as Supporting Information 4 in the OSF Repository.

3.4 Eligibility criteria

Studies were included if they focused on SMY aged 12 to 25 years; involved exposure to stigma or discrimination in social media contexts; measured processes of identity exploration; constituted primary empirical research; were published in English between 2016 and 2026; and were available in full text. Studies were excluded if they were editorials, theoretical papers without empirical data, other systematic reviews, or dissertations.

3.5 Study selection process

Searches yielded 813 records (Scopus: 385; WoS: 370; JSTOR: 58). Following deduplication via Zotero, 408 unique records were independently screened by two reviewers (VER and GS) using Rayyan. A total of 311 records were excluded at the title and abstract stage; 97 were advanced to full-text assessment. Of these 97, 67 were excluded: not involving SMY (n = 24), no social media component (n = 23), no identity focus (n = 8), and insufficient data (n = 12). Thirty articles met all inclusion criteria and were incorporated into the synthesis. Inter-rater reliability was assessed using Cohen’s kappa (κ): the abstract screening stage yielded κ = .99 (agreement = 99.8%; Landis & Koch, 1977) and the full-text stage yielded κ = .90 (agreement = 95.9%), both categorized as almost perfect agreement. All disagreements were resolved through consensus discussion. The complete selection process is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. PRISMA 2020 flow diagram of the study selection process.

Records were identified through database searches of Scopus (n = 385), Web of Science (n = 370), and JSTOR (n = 58), yielding 813 records in total. Following deduplication, 408 unique records were screened at the title and abstract stage, of which 311 were excluded. The remaining 97 records were assessed for full-text eligibility, of which 67 were excluded (non-SMY population, n = 24; no social media component, n = 23; no identity-related focus, n = 8; insufficient data for extraction, n = 12). Thirty articles met all inclusion criteria and were included in the thematic synthesis. SMY = sexual minority youth.

3.6 Data extraction

A structured extraction form was piloted on 10 studies prior to full extraction. Two reviewers independently extracted seven categories of information: bibliographic identification, study characteristics, operationalization of identity exploration, theoretical framework, inhibiting factors, identity outcomes, and key findings. The complete data extraction sheet is available as Supporting Information 1 in the OSF Repository.

3.7 Quality assessment

Quality was assessed using three Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) instruments (Aromataris & Munn, 2020): the JBI Qualitative Research Checklist (Lockwood et al., 2020; 10 items) for 19 qualitative studies; the JBI Analytical Cross-Sectional Studies Checklist (Moola et al., 2020; 8 items) for eight quantitative studies; and the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT; Hong et al., 2018; 5 items) for three mixed-methods studies. Assessments were conducted independently and informed interpretive weighting rather than serving as a basis for exclusion. The full appraisal matrix is available as Supporting Information 2 in the OSF Repository.

3.8 Data synthesis

Thematic synthesis (Thomas & Harden, 2008) was applied in three stages: inductive line-by-line coding, development of descriptive themes, and generation of analytical themes that move beyond individual study descriptions. The CPM-MST-Affordances framework was applied as a sensitizing framework after themes emerged from the data, not prior to coding. PRISMA 2020 items not applicable to non-meta-analytic thematic synthesis, including effect measures, heterogeneity assessment, sensitivity analyses, GRADE, and CERQual, were not applied; the thematic synthesis coding framework is available as Supporting Information 3 in the OSF Repository.

4.1 Characteristics of included studies

Thirty empirical articles met all inclusion criteria, published between 2016 and 2026. The majority were published between 2021 and 2025 (n = 27; 90.0%), reflecting the rapid growth of literature during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The corpus comprised 19 qualitative studies (63.3%), eight quantitative studies (26.7%), and three mixed-methods studies (10.0%). The dominance of qualitative designs reflects the complexity of subjective identity exploration experiences that are more readily captured through narrative than statistical measurement.

Studies were conducted across 18 countries or regions. The United States contributed the largest share (n = 7; 23.3%), followed by Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and Ireland at n = 3 each (10.0%), and Australia and China at n = 2 each (6.7%). Thirteen studies (43.3%) originated from outside Western liberal democratic contexts, including Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Mexico, Hungary, and Lebanon, reflecting meaningful geographic diversity, though representation from Sub-Saharan Africa, the broader Middle East, and Central and Eastern Europe remains limited.

The most frequently studied platforms were Facebook (n = 13; 43.3%), Instagram (n = 11; 36.7%), Twitter or X (n = 8; 26.7%), and Reddit (n = 6; 20.0%), with Grindr, TikTok, Tumblr, and WhatsApp each at n = 5 (16.7%). Sample sizes ranged from six participants (Jerome & Hadzmy, 2022) to 39,389 Reddit posts (Stevens et al., 2021). The list of included studies is presented in Table 1, with the complete version available in the OSF Repository as Supporting Information 1.

The dominance of particular platforms in the corpus suggests that research on SMY identity exploration tends to concentrate on social media ecosystems characterized by high visibility, content persistence, and audience convergence, indicating that platform characteristics constitute an important context in digital identity exploration research.

4.2 Conceptualizations of identity exploration in included studies

Addressing the first subsidiary research question, analysis of the definition and theoretical framework columns in the extraction sheet revealed substantial variation in how included studies operationalize the construct of identity exploration. Of the 30 studies, 12 (40.0%) defined the construct explicitly, while 18 (60.0%) employed it implicitly as part of a broader process.

Five conceptualization patterns were identified: (1) exploration as a self-discovery process, the most common pattern (n = 14), encompassing the testing and evaluation of various aspects of sexual identity (Chester et al., 2016; Hanckel et al., 2019); (2) exploration as part of the coming out process (n = 8), in which disclosure to others is viewed as an integral component (Jerome & Hadzmy, 2022; Talbot et al., 2022); (3) exploration as identity labor, the active management of digital personas as a form of exploration (n = 6; Hanckel et al., 2019; Stegeman et al., 2024); (4) exploration through online communities as identity referents (n = 5; Charmaraman et al., 2021; Stevens et al., 2021); and (5) exploration as visibility and self-representation in public digital spaces (n = 5; Wang & Zhou, 2024; Szabó, 2025). The most frequently used theoretical frameworks among included studies were Minority Stress Theory (n = 9; 30.0%), followed by Affordances Theory (n = 5; 16.7%), and Goffman’s theory of self-presentation (n = 4; 13.3%).

The accumulation of these five conceptual patterns demonstrates that identity exploration in the reviewed literature is no longer understood as an isolated internal cognitive manifestation. Although self-discovery dominates theoretically, the majority of research positions self-disclosure, impression management, and digital participation as integral and intertwined elements. This affirms that identity articulation is constructed at the intersection of individual subjective experience and the relational structures of digital ecosystems. Consequently, this conceptual heterogeneity necessitates analytical engagement that critically interrogates the methodological quality of the studies forming the corpus.

4.3 Quality assessment and risk of bias

Quality assessment using three JBI instruments yielded 23 studies (76.7%) rated as low risk of bias, six (20.0%) as moderate, and one (3.3%) as high. The single high-risk study was Littman (2021), which received a score of 4 out of 10 on the JBI Qualitative Checklist due to recruitment through online forums explicitly rejecting trans-affirmative narratives, insufficient independent verification of participants’ experiences, an inability to ensure adequate representativeness of participant voices, and use of the Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) framework, which has been widely critiqued in the scientific literature (Restar, 2020). Findings from Littman (2021) were retained with substantially reduced interpretive weight and were not used as the basis for any independent empirical claim. Six moderate-risk studies (Nos. 13, 18, 22, 23, 28, 30) generally exhibited weaknesses in researcher positionality transparency, data representation, or confound control, but their findings were retained with explicit notation where relevant. The quality appraisal matrix is presented in Table 2, with the complete version available in the OSF Repository as Supporting Information 2.

The dominance of low-risk studies demonstrates that the conceptual patterns in this synthesis rest on an empirically solid, valid, and methodologically coherent evidence base, providing a robust foundation from which to examine the factors inhibiting identity exploration across diverse research contexts.

4.4 Thematic findings: Factors inhibiting identity exploration

Thematic synthesis yielded four analytical themes describing the factors that inhibit SMY identity exploration on social media. Themes were developed inductively: descriptive codes emerged from line-by-line coding of findings in the extraction sheet, were grouped by conceptual similarity, and were interpreted using the CPM-MST-Affordances framework after themes had formed from the data, not before. The thematic coding is presented in Table 3, with the complete version available in the OSF Repository as Supporting Information 3.

4.4.1 Theme 1: Psychological internal barriers (n = 24; 80.0%)

Psychological internal barriers, consistent with proximal stressors in MST (Meyer, 2003) and the privacy rules construction mechanism in CPM (Petronio, 2002), were present in 80.0% of studies. Five subthemes were identified.

Internalized homophobia and stigma (n = 14) constituted the most consistently documented subtheme. Yu et al. (2025) demonstrated through structural equation modeling among 657 LGB individuals in China that social networking site use and self-esteem function as parallel mediators in the relationship between romantic relationship status and internalized homophobia, with gender and coming-out status as significant moderators. Chester et al. (2016) found that gay men with stronger internalized homophobia constructed highly restrictive privacy rules on Facebook. Woznicki et al. (2021) added that internalized homophobia compounded by discriminatory family environments and forced physical proximity during the COVID-19 pandemic significantly inhibited online identity exploration.

Expected rejection (n = 12) operates even before actual negative interactions occur. Chapagain et al. (2025), through NLP analysis of 18,434 Reddit posts, demonstrated that expected rejection is detectable as a linguistically distinct feature, computationally differentiable from other MST constructs such as identity concealment and internalized stigma. Tuah and Mazlan (2020) documented that LGBTQ youth in Malaysia strategically chose Twitter for its relative anonymity, illustrating that expected rejection concretely shapes platform preferences.

Identity concealment as an active strategy (n = 11) represents a behavioral response to psychological pressure. Hanckel et al. (2019) documented elaborate identity curation strategies, including maintaining multiple accounts with distinct personas and restricting LGBTQ+ content to more anonymous platforms. Charmaraman et al. (2021) found that sexual minority adolescents (n = 1,033) consistently avoided posting about sexual orientation on platforms whose audiences included parents.

Emotional exhaustion and identity labor burden (n = 8) are the cumulative consequences of sustained identity management. Riedl et al. (2025) documented among queer journalists and activists in Lebanon that platform-based violence via WhatsApp produced emotional exhaustion that drove self-censorship and withdrawal from public discourse. Sulistiyani et al. (2025) found among MSM in Palu, Indonesia, that persistent religious, cultural, and patriarchal pressures created chronic psychological tension, compelling individuals to adopt dual digital personas that prove psychologically draining.

Social isolation and loneliness (n = 5) compounds all other subthemes. Charmaraman et al. (2021) found that SMY maintained smaller social media networks and reported fewer positive social interactions compared to heterosexual peers. Stevens et al. (2021), through analysis of 39,389 r/LGBTeens posts, documented that anxiety and negative affect were the dominant themes expressed even on platforms that SMY had self-selected as spaces of refuge.

4.4.2 Theme 2: Interpersonal stigma and discrimination (n = 26; 86.7%)

This theme emerged most frequently (86.7%) and encompasses factors arising from social relations, consistent with distal stressors in MST and boundary turbulence in CPM. Four subthemes were identified.

Hate speech, harassment, and cyberbullying (n = 16) carried the highest frequency. Downes et al. (2026), the largest study in the corpus (n = 2,806), found that more than one in five LGBTQI+ individuals in Ireland experienced online hate speech in the past year, with documented impacts on mental health and sense of identity, particularly among younger individuals and those who are transgender or gender non-conforming. Herrmann et al. (2024) demonstrated quantitatively among 165 TGD adolescents in Germany that cyberbullying was significantly associated with internalizing problems that inhibit online identity expression.

Family and peer rejection (n = 8) constituted the most influential source of boundary turbulence within the CPM framework. Talbot et al. (2022) documented elaborate audience management strategies developed by LGBTQ+ students in the United Kingdom in response to the risk of being discovered by family on Facebook. Pinch et al. (2024a) found that GBQ adolescents developed highly sophisticated implicit and temporal disclosure strategies to navigate non-affirming audiences.

Identity erasure and invalidation (n = 6) was particularly salient for subgroups whose identities go unrecognized even within the broader LGBTQ+ community. Hayfield and Křížová (2021) documented among 80 pansexual and panromantic individuals that mononormativity and monosexism created a unique barrier in which individuals must actively negotiate the validity of their identities even in ostensibly affirming spaces.

Layered and appearance-based discrimination (n = 5) was most pronounced in Global South contexts. Pinch et al. (2024b) applied an intersectionality framework to show that for queer individuals in Mumbai, India, the convergence of sexual minority stigma with caste-, class-, and religion-based stigma exponentially amplified the perceived risk of online self-disclosure. Hermosa-Bosano et al. (2021) documented in Ecuador that discrimination based on appearance, skin color, and gender expression created layered barriers extending beyond sexual orientation discrimination alone.

4.4.3 Theme 3: Sociocultural and legal constraints (n = 20; 66.7%)

This theme encompasses factors operating at the macro-social level and was most prominent in studies from non-Western contexts. Three subthemes were identified.

Legal, religious, and governmental condemnation (n = 7) shapes an encompassing ecology of risk. Jerome and Hadzmy (2022) documented among young gay men in Malaysia that social, legal, and religious condemnation of homosexuality establishes background conditions that fundamentally constrain all identity expression. Riedl et al. (2025) showed that in the Lebanese context, platform-based violence via WhatsApp was compounded by infrastructural failures that permitted perpetrators to operate without consequence, a form of institutional negligence that consolidates state-level condemnation in digital form. Szabó (2025) documented how anti-gender government rhetoric in Hungary creates an atmosphere of social danger that substantially inhibits LGBTQ+ online identity expression.

Conservative sociocultural norms (n = 6) were most prominent in Southeast Asia and Latin America. Sulistiyani et al. (2025) documented among MSM in Palu, Indonesia, that Islamic religious pressure, patriarchal values, and community moral surveillance compelled individuals to adopt dual digital personas. Tan et al. (2025) found that 76% of 675 LGBT+ participants in Malaysia regularly saw negative LGBT-related messages on social media in the past year, with exposure positively associated with depression, non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), and suicidal ideation, mediated through negative future expectations.

Institutional barriers (n = 4) operate through formal institutions. Stevens et al. (2021) documented that cost barriers and parental consent requirements for mental health services, compounded by school closures, dramatically narrowed LGBTQ+ youth access to formal support. Nova et al. (2021) documented among 61 Hijra individuals in Bangladesh that Facebook’s binary gender design assumptions created structural exclusion from digital communication infrastructure itself.

Collectively, these findings demonstrate that barriers to identity exploration operate not merely through internal psychological repression or overt acts of discrimination. The macrostructure comprising legal regulations, cultural norms, religious doctrine, and institutional apparatuses actively conditions the digital communication ecosystem to dictate the boundaries of what may be articulated, to whom identity may be displayed, and the risks that accompany every act of identity expression in digital spaces.

4.4.4 Theme 4: Structural platform and algorithmic barriers (n = 15; 50.0%)

This theme encompasses factors originating from platform architecture, technical design, algorithmic systems, and moderation mechanisms. Four subthemes were identified.

Context collapse and public-by-default design (n = 7) were the most frequently cited platform barriers. Hanckel et al. (2019) documented how LGBTIQ+ youth developed elaborate identity curation strategies in response to the risks of context collapse. Talbot et al. (2022) documented that Facebook’s public-by-default design, in which content is automatically visible to all contacts unless manually configured, compelled users to perform additional identity labor merely to achieve basic privacy. Within the CPM framework, this constitutes a source of structural boundary turbulence produced by platform architecture rather than individual violations.

Algorithmic invisibility and homonormative curation (n = 6) represent a systemic, invisible form of barrier. Wang and Zhou (2024) analyzed gay content on Douyin and HIV-related content on Zhihu, finding that algorithms systematically favored ideally-bodied, romantically normative gay content while rendering non-conforming content invisible. Drawing on the concept of cruel optimism, they argued that algorithmic visibility creates an illusion of inclusion that is systematically foreclosed by platform infrastructure. Ringrose et al. (2024) documented how TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat algorithms amplify content that polices heteronormative embodiment.

Over-moderation and penalization of LGBTQ+ content (n = 4) reveals a fundamental platform policy paradox. Stegeman et al. (2024) documented among 27 LGBTQ+ creators that they developed strategic invisibility, deliberately limiting the visibility of their own content in response to over-moderation perceived to disproportionately target LGBTQ+ content. The paradox identified is this: the safety mechanisms designed to protect users simultaneously suppress the identity expression of those same users.

Western-centric design and digital literacy gaps (n = 4) were particularly salient in the Global South. Nova et al. (2021) documented that Facebook’s binary gender assumptions create structural exclusion for Hijra identities in Bangladesh. The reliance on Western cultural references in platform interface design, combined with technical skill barriers, creates an additional layer of structural exclusion for SMY whose identities were not anticipated in the design process.

These findings indicate that barriers to identity exploration do not merely originate from external social risks faced by individuals. They also stem from a deficit of user control over identity communication processes in digital platforms. Context collapse limits audience management, algorithmic curation affects identity visibility, content moderation constrains self-expression, while non-inclusive technological design limits the representational options available to users.

4.5 Cross-Thematic patterns and literature gaps

Four cross-thematic patterns were identified through cross-study comparison. First, geographic and legal context substantially moderated barrier intensity: studies from Western liberal democracies documented platform barriers and interpersonal discrimination as the most prominent factors, while studies from non-Western contexts documented an overlap between macro-level constraints and platform barriers that created a far more multidimensional ecology of risk. Second, transgender and gender-diverse adolescents faced the most severe barriers yet were the least represented; of the 30 studies, only four substantially centered transgender experiences (Herrmann et al., 2024; Ringrose et al., 2024; Stegeman et al., 2024; Littman, 2021). Third, the intersection of marginalized identities consistently amplified barriers; studies from India (Pinch et al., 2024b), Bangladesh (Nova et al., 2021), and Indonesia (Sulistiyani et al., 2025) documented how platforms designed in Western contexts create context-specific structural exclusions. Fourth, all four themes operate synergistically: internalized stigma (Theme 2) amplifies the perceived threat of interpersonal discrimination (Theme 1), which is exacerbated by macro-level norms (Theme 3) and facilitated by platform architecture (Theme 4), producing a compounding effect that renders identity exploration barriers substantially more difficult to address than if each factor operated independently.

Cross-thematic synthesis demonstrates that barriers to identity exploration operate through distinctive and intertwined mechanisms. Psychological barriers shape internal perceptions of disclosure risk, interpersonal barriers dictate expectations of audience response, sociocultural barriers set the limits of legitimate identity articulation, while platform barriers condition the visibility of identity in digital environments. These findings affirm that SMY identity construction does not unfold in a social vacuum but within a communication ecosystem simultaneously shaped by psychological pressures, social relations, cultural norms, and technological architecture. The mapping of all four analytical themes to the integrative theoretical framework is presented in Table 4.

5.1 Theoretical contributions

This review yields three principal theoretical contributions. First, it proposes an integrative CPM-MST-Affordances framework that, for the first time, explicitly connects privacy communication mechanisms, minority psychological conditions, and platform architecture within a unified explanatory model. Second, it strengthens the argument that barriers to SMY identity exploration do not originate solely from individuals’ internal conditions but are actively produced by platform design and algorithms. Third, it challenges the universality of Western-based barrier models through the substantial Global South representation in the corpus. Each contribution is elaborated below.

The first contribution is the proposition of an integrative CPM-MST-Affordances framework. Within this framework, CPM is extended beyond its conventional application in interpersonal relationship contexts (Petronio & Reierson, 2009) to the context of minority stigmatization in digital spaces, where privacy rules are formed not by unconstrained personal preference but by risk calculations systematically distorted by the burden of minority stress. Conversely, MST is enriched by CPM through the addition of a concrete communicative mechanism: how proximal stressors are translated into specific, observable privacy and identity disclosure decisions. Affordances Theory emerges as the third layer supporting the preceding two, explaining why privacy decisions cannot be separated from the technical context of the platform in which they are made. Platform disaffordances operate synergistically with proximal stressors in MST: the context collapse produced by public-by-default design is not merely a technical barrier but directly exacerbates expected rejection as a proximal stressor. An SMY who already carries the burden of anticipated rejection will respond to the risk of context collapse by constructing increasingly restrictive privacy rules, producing a deep identity concealment. This circular mechanism is what makes the CPM-MST-Affordances framework more than a simple combination of three theories: it explains how barriers across three levels mutually reinforce one another into a cohesive system that resists single-point disruption.

This review demonstrates that mapping SMY identity exploration barriers yields a more complete understanding when read through the combination of three lenses: CPM, MST, and Affordances Theory. These lenses complement one another in explaining patterns that emerge from the corpus. CPM helps clarify how SMY privacy rules in digital spaces are formed not by free personal preference but by risk calculations systematically distorted by minority stress burdens. MST contributes understanding of the proximal stressors that SMY carry, while reading these findings through CPM reveals how those stressors are translated into specific, observable privacy decisions. Affordances Theory completes both lenses by explaining why SMY privacy decisions cannot be separated from the technical context of the platform in which they are made.

The second contribution strengthens the argument that barriers to digital identity exploration do not originate solely from psychological conditions or interpersonal dynamics but also from platform architecture that produces barriers through its own design and algorithmic logic. The concepts of cruel optimism (Wang & Zhou, 2024) and strategic invisibility (Stegeman et al., 2024) articulate this mechanism precisely: platforms create structural conditions in which inclusion is promised yet systematically foreclosed. Barriers are not only products of hostile users but of platform infrastructure itself.

The third contribution, the substantial Global South representation (43.3% of studies), reveals that barriers vary dramatically according to legal and cultural context. This challenges the universality of barrier models developed within Western liberal democratic settings and points to the need for frameworks sensitive to local juridical and cultural contexts in understanding SMY experiences on social media. These theoretical contributions carry implications not only for scholarly constructivism but also for how clinical practitioners understand and accompany SMY.

5.2 Implications for clinical practice

The emotional exhaustion and identity labor burden consistently documented across the corpus indicate that digital identity management constitutes intensive psychological work for SMY rather than an ordinary social activity. The concept of developmental collision (Frost & Meyer, 2023) underscores that exposure to identity stressors on social media occurs precisely at the developmental stage at which SMY are most vulnerable. Mental health practitioners working with SMY need to integrate social media assessment into their clinical frameworks: which platforms contribute most to burden, what identity labor strategies are deployed, and where boundary turbulence most frequently occurs. This integration will also foster contextual intelligence about platform risks rather than merely technical skills.

Restricting assessment to internal psychological dimensions alone would reproduce the same bias that has dominated prior literature. The findings of this review consistently demonstrate that SMY identity exploration barriers are layered. A clinician who assesses only a client’s internalized homophobia, without mapping family rejection dynamics on specific platforms (Theme 1), the community religious norms shaping disclosure risk (Theme 3), and the context collapse risks the client faces on the platforms they use daily (Theme 4), will arrive at an incomplete picture of that client’s psychological burden. These three layers of barriers operate simultaneously, not sequentially.

Within the CPM framework, boundary turbulence experienced by SMY does not always originate from internal conditions; it can originate from boundary violations structurally produced by platform design, which are subsequently internalized as psychological burden. Comprehensive clinical assessment needs to capture all these layers simultaneously.

These implications extend equally to educators and school counselors: SMY who most need space for identity exploration face digital environments that systematically obstruct that process. Educators who understand the mechanisms of algorithmic invisibility and over-moderation of affirming LGBTQ+ content can serve as bridges for SMY seeking communities and identity representations hidden by platform infrastructure. Stevens et al. (2021) documented that cost and parental consent barriers compound SMY isolation from formal support; educators may represent the first point of entry before access to mental health services becomes possible. Change at the practitioner and educator level is crucial but insufficient as long as the platform infrastructure producing these barriers remains unaddressed.

5.3 Implications for platform design and policy

Theme 4 findings indicate that platform interventions cannot be limited to reactive content moderation. Context collapse and algorithmic invisibility are architectural barriers that require architectural responses: SMY-informed algorithmic audits to identify and correct heteronormative curation; privacy-by-default features that reduce context collapse; culturally contextualized moderation mechanisms that do not disproportionately target LGBTQ+ content; and meaningful engagement with non-Western SMY communities in the platform design process.

Theme 3 findings show that globally operating platforms bear different responsibilities in different legal contexts. The infrastructural negligence documented by Riedl et al. (2025) in Lebanon is a concrete illustration of how platform business decisions can compound existing forms of oppression. Platform policies that do not account for local legal contexts create disproportionate risks for the most vulnerable groups.

The most pressing policy implications arise from the synergistic interaction among all four themes rather than from each theme in isolation. When an SMY in a non-Western context such as Indonesia or Malaysia faces religious pressure that criminalizes their identity (Theme 3), carries a deep internalized stigma burden (Theme 2), enters a platform whose algorithms suppress their community’s visibility (Theme 4), and contends with the real boundary turbulence produced by the risk of being discovered by family (Theme 1), these four layers cannot be addressed by improving algorithms or content moderation alone. What is needed is a layered policy response that simultaneously targets psychological barriers through mental health support embedded in platforms, interpersonal barriers through mechanisms protecting against family rejection in digital spaces, macro-level barriers through cross-platform and governmental policy advocacy, and structural barriers through user-centered redesign that centers marginalized users.

5.4 Situating findings within the broader literature

Compared with prior reviews, this study advances understanding in substantive ways. Escobar-Viera et al. (2021) focused on engagement with digital health interventions for SGM; Pampati et al. (2021) synthesized the sexual health education literature; Gilbey et al. (2020) reviewed the effectiveness of digital interventions for LGBTIQ+ youth. None synthesized identity exploration barriers in social media as their primary focus. When Escobar-Viera et al. (2021) found that SMY engagement with digital health interventions increased when affirming content was available, the present review adds a critical dimension absent from their analysis: the availability of affirming content is itself structurally impeded by algorithmic invisibility and over-moderation of LGBTQ+ content (Theme 4). The intervention effectiveness measured by Escobar-Viera et al. may thus have been compromised before it could be measured by the structural barriers newly documented in this review. Similarly, when Gilbey et al. (2020) evaluated the effectiveness of digital interventions for LGBTIQ+ youth, that evaluation proceeded on the assumption that platforms are relatively neutral media. Theme 4 findings empirically challenge this assumption: platforms are not neutral media but actors that actively shape the accessibility conditions of interventions themselves.

Three of the most pressing gaps merit understanding in their conceptual dimensions. The underrepresentation of transgender youth in the corpus (only four of 30 studies) reflects not merely a data shortage but the fact that dominant identity exploration constructs in the literature have been operationalized around gay and lesbian developmental trajectories that do not accommodate transgender experiences, which resist reduction to the logic of a single coming-out trajectory. The dominance of qualitative designs (63.3%) reflects the immaturity of quantitative measurement tools for constructs such as boundary turbulence and context collapse in SMY contexts. The absence of research from Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East means that SMY experiences under the most severe criminalization have not yet entered this body of knowledge in any meaningful way.

The position of the CPM-MST-Affordances integrative framework within the broader theoretical landscape also warrants acknowledgment. Most studies in the corpus employed MST as their sole theoretical framework (n = 9; 30.0%) or Goffman’s theory of self-presentation (n = 4; 13.3%). MST excels at explaining why SMY carry certain psychological burdens but lacks a concrete communicative mechanism; Goffman explains self-presentation strategies but neither connects those internal conditions to the minority stress forming their backdrop nor to the platform architecture serving as their medium. The CPM-MST-Affordances combination fills all three layers simultaneously and indicates that the relationship between minority stress, privacy calculations, and platform disaffordances represents a direction worth pursuing empirically.

Closing the circle with the paradox opened in the background: the findings of this review confirm that the paradox is neither accidental nor a mere failure of implementation. It is structural. Social media platforms are designed according to a market logic that optimizes for mass engagement and visibility, a logic that inherently tends to reproduce majority norms, including heterosexual and cisgender norms. When SMY enter these platforms to seek community and understand their identities, they do not enter a neutral space; they enter infrastructure that actively produces conditions that obstruct their identity exploration. Platform companies’ responsibility to change these conditions is not merely ethical but flows from the recognition that technological architecture itself participates in the production of barriers.

6.1 Limitations of the included evidence

First, restricting inclusion to English-language publications introduces selection bias favoring Anglophone contexts; literature in Indonesian, Arabic, or Mandarin was not captured, meaning SMY experiences from those linguistic communities may be underrepresented. Second, the dominance of qualitative designs (63.3%) limits the generalizability of findings and precludes quantitative meta-analytic synthesis, though this is an understandable consequence of a topic grounded in subjective experience. Third, the rapid evolution of platform ecology means that some findings from studies conducted between 2016 and 2020 may describe algorithmic conditions and moderation policies that have since changed substantially. Fourth, the underrepresentation of transgender and gender-diverse adolescents (only four of 30 studies) constitutes a serious limitation reflecting a conceptual gap in the literature rather than merely a data shortage. Fifth, the dominance of convenience sampling through already-active SMY communities means that the most isolated SMY are likely underrepresented, producing estimates of barrier intensity that are probably conservative with respect to the most vulnerable subgroup.

6.2 Limitations of the review process

Sixth, the inclusion of Littman (2021) with substantially reduced interpretive weight remains a contestable decision given the substantial controversy surrounding the Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) framework (Restar, 2020); the decision was made to preserve the transparency of the pre-registered selection process. Seventh, the absence of a grey literature search excludes government reports, policy documents, and findings from practitioners working directly with SMY communities. Eighth, the non-application of formal certainty of evidence assessment using GRADE or CERQual constitutes a methodological limitation that precludes strong statements about the confidence level of findings, though the inapplicability of both frameworks to thematic synthesis across 18 countries with high contextual heterogeneity provides adequate justification.