New Survey Shows Dramatic Decline in Share of High School Students Identifying as LGB
The spike in these numbers between 2019 and 2021 is not a mystery. America’s embrace of progressive identity politics had reached a fever pitch and the COVID lockdowns gave students endless time to spend online.
The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey is a nationwide survey of high school students administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is conducted every two years.
The 2025 YRBS found a steep drop in the share of high school students who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual over the past four years. The largest decline was among 9th grade girls identifying as bisexual: Their share fell from 26% in 2021 to 13% in 2025, a 50% decrease.
The decline extended across every grade, though none matched the drop among 9th grade girls. The share of girls identifying as bisexual fell from 24% to 18% among 10th graders, from 21% to 17% among 11th graders, and from 22.5% to 18% among 12th graders.
The data showed a significant increase in bisexual identification across the board between 2015 and 2017.
But the steepest rise came over the period between 2019 and 2021. Over that two-year period, 9th grade girls identifying as bisexual jumped from 12.5% to 26%, from 15% to 24% among 10th graders, from 16% to 22% among 11th graders, and from 14% to 22.5% among 12th graders.
The spike in these numbers between 2019 and 2021 is not a mystery. America’s embrace of progressive identity politics had reached a fever pitch during those years.
The COVID lockdowns also gave students endless time to spend online, where they encountered a steady stream of messages about sexual identity. For some teenagers, identifying as gay or bisexual may have come to feel like a way to fit in.
I disagree with the takeaway in the X post below: American teens are not “becoming straight again.” I would argue that many of the teenagers who claimed to be bisexual in the survey were probably not bisexual at all. Adolescence is a time of confusion, and teenagers are especially susceptible to cultural influences.
With all that time on their hands during the pandemic, some came to think that they might be bisexual. After the lockdowns ended and the woke fever that had gripped the nation subsided, those who weren’t actually bisexual forgot all about their earlier ideas. And the numbers returned to previous levels.
American teens are becoming straight again, with – especially – female bisexuality in sharp retreat in the youngest cohorts.
via @jean_twenge:https://t.co/FQnZZePmNp pic.twitter.com/SbJUV7o5eF
— Eric Kaufmann (@epkaufm) September 28, 2026
Curiously, the CDC website’s YRBS page does not include the 2025 results released last week. Instead, visitors are told that “per a court order,” the page reflects only data published prior to January 29, 2025. The note explains:
Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from truth. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology due to the harms and divisiveness it causes. This page does not reflect reality and therefore the Administration and this Department reject it.
At any rate, the YRBS graphic was originally posted on X by college professor Jean Twenge.
In a separate post, she reported, “There’s also a decline in LGB sex among younger teens who are sexually active, so it’s not just identification.”
There’s also a decline in LGB sex among younger teens who are sexually active, so it’s not just identification. Details in Generation Tech: https://t.co/yJa1TXYrPy
— Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) (@jean_twenge) September 28, 2026
She also noted that although the survey showed that lesbian, gay, and bisexual identification among high school has plummeted — according to the CDC data — “older teens show relative stability, consistent with data from young adults.”
On her Substack website, Generation Tech, she expanded on that point. While Twenge acknowledges the drop in LGB identification among high school students, she wrote:
At first I found a decline in identifying as LGB among U.S. 18- to 24-year-olds with early data from 2025, but that decline disappeared when the full year of data for 2025 became available.
Twenge doesn’t tell us if there had been a spike in LGB identification from 2019 to 2021 for 18- to 24-year-olds or if it had been relatively stable. And the distinction matters.
We can only speculate, but I suspect LGB identification among young adults rose less sharply between 2019 and 2021 — if at all — than it did among high school students.
If that is the case, the divergence between the two age groups may tell us something about the pandemic years. Younger teens were navigating adolescence amid lockdowns, social isolation and an online culture intensely focused on identity. While the YRBS cannot tell us why the high school students’ responses changed, the speed of the rise and subsequent fall suggests that the cultural climate may have been responsible.
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Comments
I ran the numbers for gender dysphoria earlier this year and it was still going up in Washington.
When are we going to reckon with the fact that five MPD officers sit as political prisoners for the same reason?
“Adolescence is a time of confusion, and teenagers are especially susceptible to cultural influences.”
and political influences
Something is “off” with the current level- which is high. My daughter just entered HS and my wife works at a JR. TN is pretty red, but very accepting of gays (from everything I can see). With that, the level of what I think is experimentation is quite a bit higher than decades ago and it’s far more out in the open.
I think it’s still the “shock” value schtick where some girls (and boys) crave the attention of being treated as special.
“I think it’s still the “shock” value schtick where some girls (and boys) crave the attention of being treated as special.”
——
I concur, and I had reached the same conclusion, a while ago. The causation is obvious. Teens/youth crave attention and approbation from their peers, and want to be seen as “special.” Proclaiming one’s self to be “non-binary,” “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” “pansexual” and “trans” was the easiest way to achieve that.
Greatly helped out by Tik Tok.
It was always just a fad, driven by stupid surveys that let them self-identify as LGTBSATAQSDHFA whatever.
‘Bisexual’ in particular was the fad nonsense label, because it let them be safe and popular but still date somebody of the opposite sex.
When you did an actual survey asking if they had ever had actual sexual activity with somebody of the same gender, the number absolutely cratered.
It was always nothing but a social fad.
I agree with most of that, and would add something that I think is material and relevant.
Part of youth is the progression to an independent identity. This is accompanied by major uncertainty, I think in almost all teenagers and many college students. Young people search for anchors in a culture that grows more complex and dynamic.
Along the way, some kids who are lonely, unattractive, “weird” and so on, and have loose or even no attachments to peer groups retreat from sexual maturation and embrace androgyny. The regression offers simplicity and escape; to me, that’s what a lot of the “T” is about. For others, it’s time-honored rebellion, a desire to shock the old folks.
That LGBTABCDEFG stuff was and still is a sub-cultural anchor with, like it or not (I’m no friend of the T or the gender-benders, but have tried to cultivate a sense of humor about the latter) a loud and well-defined appeal. The endorsement of “gender treatment,” up to and including drugs and surgery, was a massive error in my view, having the effect of reinforcing and “mainstreaming” something that otherwise would have been sub-cultural — like, say, Lou Reed or the Edgar Winter Group of my youth. Or Rocky Horror Picture Show, popular in the late 1970s.
My point is that these things come and go. Tide comes in, tide goes out. Too bad for those who got “gender reassignment” surgery. There’ll be plenty of fodder for future lawsuits.
It’s amazing how fast the blue die gets washed out of your hair once you discover that you have to earn your keep on your own.
Its no longer the next big thing.
Don’t forget the phrase “lesbian until graduation.”
Honestly, don’t care. LGB doesn’t cause permanent harm. Not to anyone.
It’s that T that does.
The massive statistical increase in homosexual and — when homosexuality ceased to be “different” and “cool” — tranny identification among American youth could never be rationally explained as an allegedly organic phenomenon. This was obvious to any non-Dhimmi-crat who possessed common sense and who didn’t have ideological blinders on.
The phenomenon was grounded in malignant and unhealthy narcissism.
Kids/youth crave attention, plaudits and approbation, and proclaiming one’s homosexual or “trans” status was the easiest way to achieve that, in leftist/Dhimmi-crat-dominated spheres of society, such as the myriad corrupted indoctrination centers (AKA, “schools,” “colleges” and “universities”).
Perhaps, now, we’ll also see a merciful decline in the number of malignantly narcissistic, transparently attention-seeking parents — both of the “celebrity” and plebian variety — who eagerly show off their “trans” child or children, on social media and in conventional media, like some prize-winning trophy dog.
Yes, quite a lot of it is a social contagion.
It has been quite a while since I have commented here. I have been same-sex married since 2015 within an exclusive partnership that began in 2010, and have been exclusively homosexual for 47 years. I don’t usually lead with any of that, but it’s obviously relevant here. I have some points to make, rooted in belief, practice, observation, and reading.
All of my points will be based on the fact that those numbers aren’t separated by sex. Other surveys show that young women are far more likely than young men to “identify” as gay or bisexual. My comments will discuss what I think are the reasons why.
1. With the proviso that there is variability, females tend to incorporate (or at least lead with) more emotion into every part of their personalities than males do. It’s manifested in myriad ways.
2. Women can, without applying the label as such, consider themselves to be what I would call “emotionally bisexual” without ever physically having sex with another woman, or even wanting to take it that far. In my long experience, I think it’s a rare male who would regard himself as “bi” in such theoretical terms . In fact, I have never met such a man; among males, it’s common for those who are gay — and have had sex with other males — to want to consider themselves “bi” as a way of denying inclinations that carry so much baggage.
3. Thus, when males are asked if they are bisexual, they will tend strongly to focus on the sexual mechanics and pretty much only those who have or want to have sex with other males will call themselves “bi,” while more females will focus on the emotions and call the selves “bi” even if no actual sex is involved. Again, other surveys vividly confirms this in the numbers, showing FAR fewer “bisexuals” among young men than among young women.
4. To really be accurate, such surveys should separate the studied population by sex, and follow up with questions about actual behavior. Without that information, I think these surveys mainly show attitudes about homosexuality in theory.
To the extent that this longstanding homosexual can comment on the “trend” shown by the material here, it seems obvious that it became trendy to SAY you’re bisexual in an anonymous questionnaire, but I am intensely skeptical that there has been an change in the proportion of young (or old, for that matter) actually doing anything about it.
Sorry for the length of my comment. My thinking is a lot more concise than my exposition.
RC,
That’s a very well reasoned analysis. I tend to agree. My daughter was in HS in the middle of the ‘BI fad’ and made similar observations; the expansion in # reported was largely a social phenomenon. I do agree with a few others who’ve stated the present level of societal/legal acceptance for LGB has moved the needle on absolute # in willingness to be ‘open’. It is, IMO, a good thing that people don’t need to lie to themselves anymore about their inclinations, can live their lives with other consenting adults and that the level of social stigma/legal jeopardy (at least compared to that within living memory) has diminished to be nearly non existent.
Thanks. I often wonder whether there’s a point in being rational on social media, so your comment gave me some hope, however limited. As for stigma, I wonder. I could make the case both ways, but I’d be guessing. I have a gay neighbor, now retired but recently, from two high schools. If I remember, I’ll have to ask him what he thinks.
I don’t worry about the flamboyant types, but wonder about the impact of the “T” phenomenon on what I’d call, for lack of a better term, on the “silent majority” of the same-sex minority. I’m one of the LGs who isn’t thrilled with the expanded acronym, to put it mildly, and I am far from alone within the tribe.
IMO the ‘T’ has done incredible damage and sooner the rest of the LGB movement kicks them to the curb the sooner sanity will be restored. Unfortunately the level of institutional capture by ideological activists demanding absolute adherence to the ‘narrative’ means normie voices are often shut out of the discussion or if included only to be lampooned/ridiculed. Similar to the issues facing feminism and women’s behavior most of the heavy lifting reforms gonna have to come from within b/c the prevailing narrative casts any outsider who offers legit criticism as misogynist/homophobe/transphobe so they can then ignore the criticism b/c it is ‘hateful’.
The T has pretty much taken over the LGB. And the B was always a stub end; when it came to that, in the real world it was always about the LG if you pause to think about it.
The LGs, and especially the Gs, were never by nature very political. All the majority of us wanted was to be free of the pursuits that characterized so much of the post-World War II era. Once all of that receded, most of us were perfectly happy to take “yes” for an answer, if not overtly then in daily life.
A close look at the various “pride” events will show declining attendance and the resulting hyper-ideological distillation of what remains. Like the Democratic Party, I do not recognize “LGBTQIA+” so I have avoided it. I am far from alone.
Well said.
Just like the border.
We didn’t need new vaccines to conquer this contagion.
Just a new President.
A social contagion fad. It may get back down to the baseline level of five percent, but the easy availability of online porn to teens has raised that a bit.
It was all just a fad.
Meanwhile, liberals mutilated tens of thousands of children, whose lives are now completely ruined
And the medical and pharmacy industries have happily played along.
I am going to join in and add my thoughts, although I could say I simply agree with the discussion above.
I’m in my 70’s and something I noticed even when I was young is need? desire? for teens to rebel and shock. In the 1950’s Elvis and a ducktail hair cut was enough. Parents were upset. Mission accomplished. In the 60’s we were all long-haired dope-smoking hippies. Parents were upset. Then we have disco and the glorification of black dance. Parents …. Then Punk, then Goth, then Thug Life, piercings, (insert any I’ve missed) and I’m GAY!🥳 * The beta males loved the chance for attention by being flamboyant, and the girls love the costuming, being special, and taking care of “the lost boys.” However when everyone is gay, no one is special, and the fun sort of faded. Enter the Trans. At first they were the new cool, but then things got weird. The Trans lumped themselves with everybody (hello fellow kids!) whether the L’s and the G’s liked it or not but forced association is not the path to acceptance. I think T’s are fading, but I still see two in my weekly routines. One works at WholeFoods and is a dude dressed up literally like a Japanese anime girl down to the gloves. He always wears a face mask, which is nice. He never speaks. The other is at CVS and works the checkout. He goes for the ear hoops, big glasses (like girls use to look diminutive and thus cute) and blazing red lipstick. He’s happy and flamboyant. I don’t care about either of them and neither does anyone else. I think this is a signal of the end of the trend.
Mostly I wonder what comes next. Tattoos have gone mainstream and I predict (hope for?) a quick death of the nose piercing.
What fresh hell awaits us?
A small note: I’ve know gay guys since college, and most of them are, well, just people. They live normal lives and, like all of us, love who they love. They are not activists. However as always, the flamboyant activist attention seekers are the ones who make news. I don’t think I know any lesbians but since except for the activists, they don’t seek attention, so I would never know.
FWIW
It seems that abortion has taken the place of all the fads you mentioned. Next I fear it will be abortion available until birth. I read yesterday that the dems want to push that as a national law..
In the interest of avoiding vulgarity while feeling reasonably free to imply the same: At least when it comes to the male of the species, there is a particular point when “gay” is no longer a fashion statement. Fill in the blanks, but I won’t.
As for the gender confusion of the “T” hitchhikers, as a ‘mo for all of my adult life I can absolutely, positively say that I am 100% as invested in “the binary” as the straightest arrow in any quiver.
To illustrate from an actual example in my real life: My hetero and I go to the rodeo. He ogles the parade of rodeo queens in their Monica Lewinsky lipstick, and the barrel racers all tight and fast, being careful to be subtle about it. We wander through the stands and corridors, chuckling together at the sight of the 20-something gals in their short shorts and skin tight tops, a crucifix tucked into the cleavage to protect their virtue on a sunny afternoon and (maybe) that night.
Me, on the other hand, I pay my closest attention to them roughstock cowboys on the bucking horses and bulls, and to the ropers and steer wrestlers, always low key of course. Wranglers fit best, I think. Old school.
“No eye candy better than a rodeo in July,” my friend says.
“Damn right,” I reply.
Yee hah! America! LOL