LGBT early adopters – separating fact from fiction

If Jane Austen were alive and a writer of technology, she might open this piece thusly: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of an iPhone 5. Or a Samsung Galaxy 4. Or a tablet. Or one of a dozen other gadgets or technologies that transform our lives almost daily. But as any student of Pride and Prejudice knows, Austen wasn’t stating a universal truth but, rather, mocking the assumptions of her milieu.

And so we find exactly two hundred years later, that as a culture we still tend to make certain assumptions about our behavior that have little basis in fact. One of them is that the LGBT communities, and especially gay men, are early adopters of technology.

And why shouldn’t we believe it? After all, it is everywhere in the media. When Paul Saffo, a tech blogger and Stanford University educator, grandiloquently declares that, “there’s something slightly indefinable about gay males that make them early adopters and important leading edge indicators,” aren’t we more prone to confirm our own vain assumptions about ourselves as a community on the ‘leading edge,’ despite some obscure reference to the ‘slightly indefinable’?

Or when Jaime Woo, the author of Meet Grindr: How One App Changed the Way We Connect, tells the New York Times that “gay men are early adopters,” aren’t our own beliefs being validated by the official paper of record?

The problem, however, isn’t in the assumptions we make about ourselves – all gay men are fashion forward, martini-swilling, sharp-tongued urbanites – but that so little empirical data has been found to justify these assumptions.

Tim Evanson, a researcher and social scientist from Washington, D.C. lays bare the myths. “There is almost no real empirical evidence that LGBT people are early adopters of technology. Most such claims are assertions, often coming from self-interested technology companies or companies promoting marketing to the LGBT community.

There are studies which claim to find evidence of this. One is a 2003 study by Forrester Research, which surveyed 60,000 households and asked them about their technology buying habits and use. Forrester has done this for years, but in 2003 Forrester specifically asked households to self-identify their sexual orientation.

From this survey, Forrester Research said gays were wealthier and better educated; 80 percent of gay men and 76 percent of lesbians were online (compared with 70 percent of straight men and 69 percent of straight women); gays were 33 percent more likely to have broadband connections and have been online longer than heterosexuals.

The problem, Evanson observes, is that we don’t know how those used in the survey were selected. We don’t know how Forrester Research selected these 60,000 households for their research. Randomly? Self-selection? From people who showed up at Apple stores? We just don’t know. A random sample is the best, but we can’t tell if Forrester used a random sample.

But early adopters by their very definition must have the means to purchase the first smartphones and smart TVs and electric cars. Many surveys indicate that gay men and lesbian women, many without the financial burdens that come with childrearing, are, in fact statistically wealthier and are better educated.

According to a 2012 Prudential survey of more than 1,000 LGBT people, respondents not only reported significantly higher annual incomes but they also carried less in debt than the average American and had more in household savings.

In a CNNMoney report Michele Meyer-Shipp, chief diversity officer at Prudential said, “To start, LGBT individuals are generally well-educated, with more than half of respondents receiving at least a bachelor’s degree, and tend to live in higher-income areas. It flows down – you have a higher level of education, access to higher paying jobs in areas where there are good salaries, and more disposable income to allocate to things like saving and retirement.”

Other data has found that denying LGBT people equal access to family benefits and other civil rights may be contributing to higher poverty rates in the LGBT community than in the general population overall.

Despite assumptions rife with fallacy, you’d be hard pressed to convince Morris Chapdelaine, the co-founder of the social mobility app Guy Spy, or Bo Andras, of San Diego’s homegrown Pride Card, that the LGBT community aren’t early adopters of technology, highbrow or otherwise.

Chapdelaine, whose site recently topped one million members, is certain that gay men are early adopters. “The gay community has always been early adopters of new technology … we crave new things, new ways to make our lives better. We consider ourselves trend setters. We also come from a history of seeking out new and innovative ways to meet others like ourselves in a safe and positive way.”

Andras, whose Pride Card features discounts at 300 gay and gay-friendly businesses and boasts 12,000 card-carrying members, explains the concept of early adoption from a much different perspective. “The Pride Card is an affinity card that allows businesses to show their support for equal rights while offering special discounts to cardholders. After the passage of Proposition 8, we wanted to create a discount card that promoted businesses that support equal rights for everyone. It was heartening to have so many businesses that were willing to step forward to say we are all equal under the law, in spite of significant opposition from others.”

Stampp Corbin, Andras’ business partner on the Pride Card said, “While the Pride Card has been very successful, we are now seeing the quick adoption of our mobile app. Gay men in particular have been on the forefront of social media for many years by using hook-up sites like Adam4Adam.”

Despite the paucity of empirical data on the subject Corbin, Andras and Chapdelaine may have a stronger argument for how the use of technology is more widely disseminated in the LGBT community together with its early adoption. And as the saying goes, perception is everything.