By SUZANNE DOWNING
Oct. 3, 2026 — As LGBTQ History Month begins, a new analysis of federal survey data may be indicating a reversal in a recent youth trend: Fewer younger high school students are identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, with the largest reported declines among girls.
October’s annual observance highlights LGBTQ history and achievements as something special due to sexual preferences. This year, it arrives alongside questions about how much adolescent identity is influenced by changing cultural trends and what survey responses can reveal about underlying sexual interests.
The findings come from psychologist Jean Twenge’s analysis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2025 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. It’s an independent interpretation of CDC data.
The CDC released its latest survey results Sept. 21. Its accompanying report, Youth Health in Focus, emphasized student health, including improvements in mental health and dietary behaviors. The national survey covers high school students and provides data for tracking changes over time.
According to Twenge’s analysis, approximately 11% of ninth graders identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual in 2025, down from 17% in 2023. That represents a six-percentage-point decline, or roughly a third of the earlier share. Twenge has been tracking the changes for several year.
Older students showed smaller changes. Among eleventh graders, identification fell from approximately 18% to 15%; among twelfth graders, it declined from approximately 18% to 16%. That’s still a significant drop.
The most striking reported change involved bisexual identification among ninth-grade girls. Approximately 26% identified as bisexual in 2021, compared with 13% in 2025 — a halving of the share over four years.
Those figures raise a question: Could some of the earlier increase in youth identification have reflected a social trend, with identity labels becoming more popular and then losing appeal? A fad, shall we say?
The surveys measure how students describe themselves at particular moments. A change in identification does not, by itself, establish a change in underlying attraction or determine whether that attraction has biological origins.
Possible explanations include changing social influences, willingness to disclose, the appeal of particular labels, and differences between successive groups of students.
Twenge’s findings also do not support a blanket claim that young adults are moving in the same direction. In her Sept. 28 discussion, she acknowledged that an apparent decline among 18- to 24-year-olds in early 2025 data disappeared when the full year became available. The sharper reversal appears concentrated among younger teenagers.
A separate debate concerns gender identity, which is distinct from sexual orientation.
Political scientist Eric Kaufmann reported that the share of respondents in FIRE’s undergraduate survey identifying as a gender other than male or female fell from 6.8% in 2022 and 2023 to 5.2% in 2024 and 3.6% in 2025. The 2025 survey included more than 60,000 students.
Another analysis, from the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, reached a different conclusion using American College Health Association data. It reported transgender and nonbinary identification among surveyed undergraduates at approximately 4.7% to 6.7% in spring 2025, depending on the measure, with signs of a plateau rather than a clear fall.
For parents, educators, and policymakers, the decline among younger high school students challenges assumptions that recent increases in identification would continue indefinitely.
11 thoughts on “As LGBTQ History Month begins, analysis finds fewer younger teens identify as gay or bisexual”
I was born in October and object to, am offended and resent this. October is NOT LGBTQ history month and is NOT about being LGBTQ. This is More Invented, Made up BS brought to you by Heterophobes and those who want to promote and turn everything into being LGBTQ and promoting special rights for themselves. .Expect more of the nonsensical turning everything into being about LGBTQ as you support and vote them into running everything. You already have June, you don’t need any more months.
Hear! Hear!
I would consider not using their alphabet mafia acronym. It is deviancy. The men are sodomites. The women lost. They do not have June. June is the month for brides and graduations. Cede nothing, because they are owned nothing but contempt. The young ones deserve rescuing, but the old ones are hardened and likely lost. Everything they touch turns to ash.
Since my birthday is at the end of June, I have been greeted at my church with the insult that the Sunday aligning with my birthday is “Pride Sunday”. I did not attend church the last Sunday in June this year and will not attend on that day in the future. It might be better and easier, I admit, to find another church.
Might have something to do with Parenting styles shifting, and more parents are more sensitive to when their own issues affecting their child. To which GenX were by majority the parents of GenZ. The majority of adults today raising kids are Millennials (births in the early and mid 1980’s and earliest years of 1990’s). We are bit more sensitive and self accountable than GenXers about our generations own issues with anxiety and mental health issues. Baby boomers were not very good parents. They ignored GenX as kids and abandoned them. While they screamed, criticized, and pressured Millennials as kids.
Kids who have sexual identity issues usually go to the parents behaviors. I do notice a difference how millennials are to GenAlpha than GenX was to GenZ.
However the drawback of Millennials over sensitivity to GenAlpha is GenAlpha is responding with developing a really over confident selfish and self centered attitude in who they are because of millennials trying not pass on the anxiety and pressure insecurity Baby boomers pressed down on us, or millennial parents are trying to get better holding ourselves accountable for our responses to trauma.
……Eventhough more GenAlpha junior and high school age students are more confident and accepting in being born a boy or girl and accepting what God made them at birth. I feel like GenAlpha is almost getting over confident that they developing a lack of self awareness of their own flaws and sins because of millennials Gentle Parenting methods are extreme
This is my kind of month. If I become governor, LGBTQ will be a year long celebration. Alaska’s public schools will become a giant playground for homosexuality, lesbianism, and transsexualism. Alaskans will pay for it, public teachers unions will enforce it, and everyone will honor it when I’m the boss. And that’s final.
And, you will begin normalizing pedophilia as soon as you can. You can put Bill Walker in charge of the effort.
I consider pedophilia extraordinarily normal. BTW, Bill Walker is on my steering committee. Such an honorable man. And Byron Mallot was my mentor. Another honorable man from SE Alaska who loved very young ladies. What’s wrong with that?
For me, whether some “identifies” as LGBTQ+ is absolutely meaningless. The problem arises when someone DEMANDS some sort of recognition or privilege for that “identification”. And that is what this all about – it partners up with a victim/oppressor perspective that is advanced by the Left. For me, when some announces that they are LGBTQ+, my reaction is and will be to ignore the statement. It means nothing and deserves nothing. It IS nothing.
JMARK. You make me think of christian homeschool parents trying to demand my (public) money to promote their wacky beliefs. Stay outa my face and my wallet.
Oh, Evan. Ever the sodomite degenerate. Show us where on the doll the bad man touched you as a child. Do you just come to this website to spread your degenerate filth, or are you just a spoilsport troll at heart? Turn to Jesus. He can heal your misery and bring you into the light. Or, relax in the thrall of your demons, but please, do so far from here. The rest of us can see you for who you are, and it isn’t a pretty sight.