A new study has found that fewer and fewer young Americans are identifying as transgender or queer, while more and more young people are identifying as heterosexual.
The findings have captured significant attention, with a post on the social media platform X accumulating more than 13 million views since it was shared on Tuesday, sparking considerable discourse online.
The findings also differ from other reports on LGBTQ+ identification trends in America, as the polling company Gallup reported earlier this year that LGBTQ+ identification had instead been on the rise in 2024.
Why It Matters
While President Donald Trump has made his views on transgender identity clear—signing an order stating there are only two sexes and scrapping diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programs this year—the decline begins in 2023, according to the study, suggesting that his election, and wider political influences, did not spark the decrease.
The researchers of the study instead suggest that changes in mental health among young people following the COVID-19 pandemic and the role social media may have had on this trend, while political and cultural attitudes have had little impact.
What To Know
The study, carried out by the Centre for Heterodox Social Science at the University of Buckingham, England, analyzed the gender identification and sexual orientation of young Americans.
To gather its findings, the center analyzed data across multiple different surveys including: the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) annual campus surveys of undergraduate students, the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) freshman survey, the Andover Phillips Academy annual student survey, the Brown Daily Herald spring and fall polls of Brown University students, and the Cooperative Election Study (CCES).
The researchers found that across three of these surveys, the number of undergraduate students identifying as neither male nor female has now declined after a peak between 2022 to 2023.
Specifically, there has been a decline of between 3 to 6 percent in the number of students identifying as non-binary in 2025, compared to 2023.
Additionally, the researchers found that there has been a "return to heterosexuality," even though students identifying as lesbian or gay have remained "stable" in recent years. That said, the number of students identifying as heterosexual still remains 7 percentage points below its level in 2020.
Those identifying as bisexual have varied the most, increasing from 10 to 17 percent of students between 2020 and 2023, and decreasing to 12 percent by 2025.
The researchers said that it appeared then that "trans and queer are going out of fashion among young people, especially in elite settings."
They also said that identifying as transgender, bisexual, and queer were all more popular among later graduating classes, and that by 2025, the freshman cohort was less likely than older students to identify as BTQ+.
The researchers also said that LGBT students report worse mental health than heterosexual young people, but noted that whether this is because LGBT "causes mental illness," or because "mental illness causes individuals to be LGBT" is "beyond the scope" of the study.
However, they did point to research showing the increase in mental illness in 2021 and 2022 post-pandemic, which declined by 2023, and the researchers said this correlated with the start of the decline in BTQ+ identification. It was also in 2022, a year after the rise in mental illness, that BTQ+ identification peaked.
While mental health does not "adequately account" for the decline, the researchers said, it therefore appears to "account for a portion of the change."
Meanwhile, between 2023 and 2025, political ideology, culture war attitudes and levels of religious identification appeared to remain stable, prompting the researchers to say these factors have had "little effect" on the gender and sexual identities of students.
Ritch Savin-Williams, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, who was not part of the study, told Newsweek that he believed any decline in BTQ+ identification would be "because of the negative politics around trans."
As a result of the politics, "youth realize identifying as trans might well hurt their careers," he said, and added that unless politics in the country changes, he doubts the trend "will move anywhere other than decreasing."
He also said that he thought the argument that mental health could play a role in this trend appears to be "false, largely because research suggests that LGBTQ+ youths are healthier than straight youths."
What People Are Saying
The researchers said: "Despite high correlations between sexual/gender identity and political attitudes within individuals, the
over-time trend in gender and sexuality seems relatively independent of political, cultural and religious beliefs. Improving mental health, however, appears to be part of the explanation for the decline of BTQ+ identification. One possibility is that woke beliefs played a role in the emergence of BTQ+ identity and mental illness identification in the 2010s, but that these have since become substantially uncoupled, obeying their own distinct rhythms. Further work is needed to test this hypothesis."
Do you have an experience or opinion relevant to this report? We'd like to hear from you if so. Please send any comments to jasmine.laws@newsweek.com.
