The 21st century has seen an explosion of new language and new understandings of gender and sexuality, with LGBTQ+ adolescents often depicted as harbingers of social change in gender and sexuality, challenging mainstream beliefs and values and using social media as tools for expression and community building.  In this University Forum, Phillip Hammack, professor of psychology and Director of the Sexual and Gender Diversity Laboratory, will provide a historical framework to understand this current landscape and share research on identity labeling among adolescents in diverse communities in California. Adriana Manago, associate professor of psychology and head of the Culture and Tech Lab, will discuss recent research on how queer youth engage with master and alternative narratives for gender and sexuality via social media and how this process is mediated by affordances of different platforms, informed by offline contexts, and how it looks different at various intersections of gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity.