LGBTQ youth more likely to seek community online, survey shows

A new survey from Lady Gaga's nonprofit Born This Way Foundation found LGBTQ youth are more likely to seek community online compared to non-LGBTQ youth.

Composed of data collected from 3,015 online interviews with people ages 15 to 24 in June and July, the findings showed LGBTQ youth respondents were unique in saying they felt they could be more themselves online than they could offline. Seventy-six percent of LGBTQ respondents agreed they could be their "complete self online" compared to 74 percent who said they could be their "complete self with friends."

For comparison, 66 percent of all non-LGBTQ respondents said they felt they could be their "complete self online" while 82 percent said they could be their "complete self with friends."

The greatest divide, however, was in whether or not respondents went online to "find relatable people" because it is "hard to in daily life." More than 60 percent of LGBTQ youth reported to doing so, compared to 40 percent of non-LGBTQ youths.

Similar findings were published in an "Out Online" report by LGBTQ youth advocacy group GLSEN, which examined the in-depth experiences of LGBTQ youth online. The 2013 report found 62 percent of LGBTQ youth used the internet to find LGBTQ resources and information, five times the rate of non-LGBTQ youth.

LGBTQ youth are also more likely to be isolated and look to the web to build their social networks, according to the report, which found more than half of LGBTQ youth who were not out to peers in person had used the internet to connect with other LGBTQ people. Read more via NBC