A sharp reversal is underway in how young Americans identify sexually and by gender. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Survey documents a drop in "LGB" identification among high school students. The decline is steepest among girls: bisexual identification among female freshmen plummeted from 26 percent in 2021 to 13 percent by 2025.
The pattern holds in college. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression surveyed students identifying as something other than male or female and found the share fell from 6.8 percent in 2022-2023 to 3.6 percent in 2025. At Brown University, the share of students identifying as nonbinary dropped to 2.6 percent in 2025, down from 9.2 percent in 2023.
Politicians and analysts have watched the trend closely. During the 2024 campaign, both parties debated transgender messaging, with some GOP figures seizing on the decline as evidence that earlier surges were driven by social contagion rather than underlying shifts in sexual orientation or gender identity. Researchers Erik Kaufmann and Jean Twenge have documented the decline since 2023.
The earlier growth in LGBTQ identification—particularly around 2020—coincided with heightened progressive cultural influence and pandemic lockdowns that pushed social life online. Some observers argue that social media platforms, especially TikTok, made it easy for young people to adopt bisexual or nonbinary identities as a path to community without requiring lifestyle changes. The subsequent waning of progressive cultural dominance, they suggest, removed that incentive.
