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    "content_hash": "201e29d127fa280482eb216283e95c7fab240d300a6226f820918ac16d713eac",
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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/10\/23\/science\/lgbt-teens-identification.html?emc=edit_nn_20261024&nl=the-morning&segment_id=228603",
    "parsed_content": "AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTAre Fewer Teens Identifying as Gay or Bisexual? It\u2019s Complicated.New data have prompted questions about changes in teens\u2019 sexual orientations. But researchers disagree on how much the numbers can really tell us.Listen \u00b7 7:29 min Share full articleAfter peaking at 26 percent in 2021, the percentage of ninth-grade girls identifying as bisexual dropped in 2025 to 13 percent, according to recent federal data.Credit...Octavio Jones\/ReutersBy Azeen GhorayshiOct. 23, 2026Jean Twenge has made a career out of studying generational differences. Central to her work is analyzing federal survey data on youth and adults, looking for shifts in how successive generations see themselves and behave.Some of the most notable changes between generations have involved gender and sexuality, where there has been a steady increase in young people identifying as L.G.B.T.Q. over the decades. But as culture and attitudes evolve over time, Dr. Twenge has wondered if that trajectory will hold.Her analysis of new federal numbers on youth and sexual identity suggests there may be a change: In a recent post on her Substack, Generation Tech, Dr. Twenge argued that lesbian, gay and bisexual identification was in a \u201cfree fall\u201d among U.S. high schoolers, with the clearest declines among ninth-grade girls. After peaking at 26 percent in 2021, the percentage of ninth-grade girls identifying as bisexual dropped to 13 percent in 2025.The change caught her eye, Dr. Twenge said, because \u201cpretty much every other indicator for a very long time was going in the direction of more same-sex relationships, more acceptance of same-sex relationships, more identification.\u201d Those patterns were evident ever since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began surveying youth about their sexuality in 2015, incidentally the same year gay marriage was legalized in the United States.\u201cIt\u2019s a reversal of very longstanding trends,\u201d Dr. Twenge said.The data were collected as part of the C.D.C.\u2019s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which is administered every two years in all four high school grades across the country. Understanding how young people identify is important to researchers like Dr. Twenge because it can help predict broader cultural shifts that may shape society in the future.Dr. Twenge\u2019s analysis immediately prompted speculation about the forces driving the change.Conservative commentators argued the nation\u2019s rightward swing had swayed young people, suggesting that the prior rise in L.G.B.T.Q. identities had been a product of progressive institutions promoting them. \u201cAmazing what happens when you cut the Department of Education and USAID,\u201d Terry Schilling, the director of the American Principles Project, posted on X.Others argued that the findings reflected an increasingly hostile climate for L.G.B.T.Q. people in the United States, making teenagers afraid to disclose their sexual identities, especially in surveys conducted by the federal government.Image\u201cPretty much every other indicator for a very long time was going in the direction of more same sex relationships, more acceptance of same sex relationships, more identification,\u201d Jean Twenge said.Credit...Sandy Huffaker for The New York TimesDr. Twenge disputed both interpretations, arguing that smaller declines had first been observed under the Biden administration. She said that neither theory could explain why the number of ninth-grade girls identifying as bisexual had fallen by half between 2023 and 2025.Still, other researchers questioned how much the data revealed at all.Andrew Flores, a demographer at American University and the Williams Institute, stressed that it was difficult to draw broad conclusions about trends in young people\u2019s sexual identities given that most of the change showed up only in ninth-grade girls.The data showed a clear increase in high schoolers saying they identified as heterosexual, up to 78 percent in 2025 from 73 percent in 2023, Dr. Flores said. But most of that shift could be explained by the drop in ninth-grade girls identifying as bisexual. Across all grades, the share identifying as lesbian or gay remained relatively stable, at roughly 3 to 5 percent.Christopher Julian, a postdoctoral researcher in demography at Vanderbilt, questioned whether the data told a story about a \u201cfree fall,\u201d or whether the increases in gay and bisexual identification that preceded it were more noteworthy.Dr. Julian noted that there had been a sizable decline in the share of teenagers identifying as heterosexual, to 73 percent in 2021 from 85 percent in 2019. But that had coincided with changes to the survey\u2019s wording, with new answer options including identifying \u201cSome other way\u201d or \u201cDo not know what this is asking.\u201d Those changes made it difficult to draw direct comparisons between the two data sets.The argument that lesbian, gay and bisexual identification was more broadly falling is \u201cnot statistically there \u2014 it\u2019s a sensational claim,\u201d Dr. Julian said. \u201cSome people have suggested that there was a going back into the closet or a revoking of identity, but that\u2019s not evidenced in the data.\u201dYoung people are still identifying themselves under the L.G.B.T.Q. umbrella much more than previous generations, said Phillip Hammack, director of the Sexual and Gender Diversity Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz.Data from 2025 Gallup polls of youth and adults showed that, overall, levels of L.G.B.T.Q. identification remained mostly stable, with a slight recent dip, at about 9 percent of the general population.\u201cThat\u2019s a huge uptick from when they first began tracking this in 2012,\u201d Dr. Hammack said. Looking at that data, Gen Z is clearly the biggest driver of the increase across cohorts, with more than 20 percent identifying with some kind of L.G.B.T.Q. label. (Members of Gen Z are now 14 to 29 years old.)But he acknowledged that the signal emerging among ninth-grade girls was something researchers should pay close attention to in future surveys.\u201cI think this is something we need to watch,\u201d Dr. Hammack said, \u201cprecisely because these are young people who are starting to experience these questions about their gender and sexuality in such a hostile moment.\u201dDr. Twenge agreed that understanding what\u2019s happening among girls is important. Research has shown that girls and women are more likely to have sexual identities that fluctuate over their lifetimes and are much more likely than boys and men to identify as bisexual. That makes the political and cultural environment even more salient.\u201cTheir sexuality just changes more,\u201d Dr. Twenge said. \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s showing up here in both the increase and the decrease. But why it\u2019s so big for the ninth graders, I don\u2019t know.\u201dWhat is clearer is how young people in these groups are faring. While the 2025 C.D.C. survey showed promising mental health improvements among high schoolers more generally, lesbian, gay and bisexual students reported high rates of sadness and suicidal thoughts.The survey did not include questions about gender identity, complying with an executive order from President Trump declaring that the federal government would acknowledge only two sexes.The prior version of the survey had shown that transgender students had among the highest levels of sadness and suicidal ideation in their peer group.\u201cTo me, it\u2019s just a sad loss of information about people,\u201d Dr. Flores said. \u201cSimply erasing that data doesn\u2019t mean the problem stops, it just means it can\u2019t be tracked.\u201dAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT"
}