Mate, not a fan of the tack of a straight person implicitly telling me "everything's fine, now. Equality's been reached." You may not have directly said that, but that's what it sounds like with the direction of your questioning. If equality had been reached, the gay apps and websites wouldn't be 30%+ faceless profiles, straight male actors wouldn't be praised for their "bravery" for playing a gay character, you wouldn't hear about hate crimes, you wouldn't see a lesbian couple getting their kid removed from school because the teachers don't want to explain their relationship, or the amount of shit trans people are getting from the media, or the way monkeypox is being reported.
I'm 35. As for what the situation is like for young LGBTs, yes, you can talk about broader trends that more will be out than in the past, and the coming out age is lowering over time, and being explicitly homophobic is less socially acceptable than it used to be. But in some parts of the west, you also have creeping homophobic and transphobic legislation (don't say gay bill in Florida as one example). The suicide rate is still considerably higher for them and so is the homelessness rate. There are far too many variables to the individual involved as to whether it is safe for them to be out and in the open, here are a few:
What are their friends like?
Are they in a co-ed school or a same gender school?
What is the general atmosphere at the school like?
What are their parents' political and social views like?
What are their parents' social circles like?
What are their siblings like?
Are they from a religious household? If so, what type of religious household?
Are any others out at their school?
Do they live in a rural area or an urban area?
What is their ethnic background?
What socioeconomic background do they come from?
How much pressure do they personally face to conform to heteronormative/patriarchal/cisnormative standards?
What can be said with 100% certainty is it was harder to grow up LGBT in the past than not being LGBT at the time, and it is still harder to grow up LGBT than it is to not be LGBT in the present, even with progress in the last few decades.
I think it's also likely that you're so used to seeing characters who are like you that you notice it more than people who aren't as used to being represented. Thinking about it as a quota system is not the right way, it's more a case of there need to be more POC in leading roles, more disabled people in leading roles, more women in leading roles, more LGBTs in leading roles etc. It's not a case of every single film/series needs some representation for every marginalised group out there. So this is why terms like "quota" and "politically correct" sound like a bit of a red flag to me.
I suspect when it comes to Disney and Pixar, when they do shove in one LGBT character, it's normally because they've had such a long period of being "family-friendly" (AKA a homophobic dog whistle) that they're trying to show they're learning, but of course, they'll only do this for very minor characters usually.
It's also worth remembering the positive portrayals that don't fall into a number of tropes have only really started to be more common in the last decade or so. Plenty of films end up with LGBT characters being killed or committing suicide, suffering serious problems surrounding their sexuality and loneliness/isolation. There's also been quite a few films where LGBT themes have been significantly toned down, one example of that was Alexander (about Alexander the Great).
Also regarding the stats, plenty of people are still very closeted and not in a position to come out, so the stats don't give you anything close to the full picture. But that's already been said.
Trying to be informative here.
