Sharp Drop in US Teens Identifying as LGBTQ+, New Studies Show

In late September and early October 2026, researchers and civil society in the United States examined new demographic data revealing a substantial drop in the share of American adolescents identifying as sexual minorities or transgender, following a decade of sustained growth. Newly released figures from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), overseen by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), corroborated findings from independent academic surveys showing a retreat in LGBT self-identification among younger secondary school students.

According to a report by LGBTQ Nation , citing an analysis by San Diego State University psychology professor Jean M. Twenge on her Substack Generation Tech , the sharpest contractions occurred among 14- to 15-year-olds in 9th grade. The share of 9th graders identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual fell from 17% in 2023 to 11% in 2025. The most significant decrease was recorded among girls: while 26% of 9th-grade girls identified as bisexual in 2021, that proportion was halved to 13% by 2025. Overall LGB identification among female 9th graders dropped from 27% in 2023 to 23% in 2025, whereas among boys in the same cohort the reduction was modest, moving from 9% to 7%. Among 12th-grade girls (ages 17–18), the trajectory remained relatively stable: 26% in 2021, 28% in 2023, and 25% in 2025. Crucially, researchers noted that the shift extended beyond self-identification to reported behavior: among sexually active 9th-grade girls, the proportion reporting same-sex sexual contact dropped from a peak of 30% in 2023 to 21% in 2025.

These findings align with data published by the Centre for Heterodox Social Science at the University of Buckingham in the United Kingdom, led by politics professor Eric Kaufmann. Analyzing surveys of students across American secondary and higher education institutions, the center documented a fifty-percent decline in youth identifying as transgender or nonbinary. Annual undergraduate surveys conducted by the civil liberties organization FIRE showed nonbinary identification dropping from 6.8% in 2023 to 3.6% in 2025, while polling of Brown University students showed a drop from approximately 5% to 2.6%. A parallel trend appeared at Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, where nonbinary self-identification decreased from over 9% in 2023 to 3% in 2025. Conversely, at less selective institutions tracked by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) freshman survey, the figure remained steady at just under 2% across several years.

The shifting figures have triggered extensive debate over underlying factors. Conservative sociologists and several researchers interpret the data as a return to pre-surge baselines following a temporary peak during the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that the rapid growth in the early 2020s was partly fueled by social media trends and social contagion, especially regarding bisexual and nonbinary labels. In contrast, LGBTQ+ advocates and human rights observers argue that the decline reflects a chilling effect driven by an increasingly contentious political atmosphere, the passage of state-level restrictions on school curricula and gender-affirming medical care, and heightened social hostility, which may lead teenagers to conceal their identities on surveys. For their part, analysts emphasize that identification rates among older cohorts (ages 18 to 24) have remained durable, pointing to nuanced differences across developmental stages.

The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) is a national initiative managed by the CDC since 1991 to monitor health and risk trends among American youth. The Centre for Heterodox Social Science at the University of Buckingham was established in 2023 by political scientist Eric Kaufmann to foster empirical research on contested cultural and social questions.

Shifting generational attitudes and self-identification patterns regarding sexual minorities have emerged across multiple Western nations. Previously, Urania reported in detail on sociological research in the Netherlands documenting declining acceptance of homosexuality among secondary school students, and analyzed a multi-country survey by Ipsos indicating a plateau or retreat in public support for various LGBT policy measures after a 2021 peak.