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.
34 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.
Sometimes the modern church wanders a long way from its founding document:
Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall”
Not only easier, but smarter depending on what we are looking for in a church. Cheers –
JMARK, you attend a Weird (and disgusting) church. They have depraved humor for even thinking like that @thinking the last Sunday of June is pride day just because the government created June pride month and the last Sunday is usually when pride parade is scheduled. That’s disgusting for them to even think that.
Become a Catholic.
You can be a liberal or conservative Catholic.
BUT there will be no “Pride Sunday” to deal with (except in Hoboken, NJ)
You can put up Christmas decorations in the month of October. The Rights silent protest against the demonic.
The stores All already put out Christmas decorations this week ready to be sold.
Be kind of cute if we saw neighbors with trees, lights around their homes, Christmas lighted up yard toys in their yard. All while the kids are trying to particle in a demonic Halloween trick o treating and the neighbors got Christmas decorations up
Give it up.
The evangelical push to get rid of Halloween failed a LONG time ago.
In fact it’s bigger then ever (because adults love the party atmosphere & Capitalism approves)
It’s still a candy grab for kids, but that will change soon enough (less & less kids) then more & more “partying”
If “capitalism” approves it must be good!
Whatever. Halloween has turned into a disgusting satanic bacchanalia for adults. If you are an adult and this is thing for you, grow up. It’s like men having toys on their desk, but worse.
I agree. But it grows & grows because of adults, Halloween displays in box stores, pop-up Halloween stores and America’s candy industry.
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?
Does JKT have any kind of relationship history at all? Or are we dealing with a full-on gay mommy’s boy? This is getting pathetic. There must be something on JKT’s dating history. A spurned homosexual lover. Something. Somebody. We don’t need to hear about it after the election . Voters need to know about him before the election. And he’s not talking about it.
He’s secretly married to another man, but it’s being kept out of the media …….intentionally. Being outed as a gay, same-sex married candidate will cost him votes from men in the 35-85 age range. And they will vote against him.
The Alaska public really doesn’t know a damn thing about JKT other than that he is queer, a mommy’s boy and a radical left wing Democrat. Who IS this little fellow?
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.
Tamra. Do think about me at night too?
No one thinks about you. You are lower then low.
Here let me put into language you can understand. You are like an untouchable from your garbage culture.
Some wacky beliefs are more acceptable than others apparently. You take exception to Christian Homeschoolers while many of the rest of us take exceptions to manmade global warming due to CO2 emissions, lockdowns, 6 foot spacing in line, masks outdoors, COVID shots for infants and kids, the notion that someone else needs to be vaccinated to protect you from that virus, all things LGBTQWTF, renewables, a carbon free future, EVs, Islam and Sharia co-existing peacefully with non-Muslims.
There are more, but you get the idea. The difference between your list and mine is that Christians do not use government to enforce their beliefs on anyone else, while you on the left use the government cramdown to enforce your wacky beliefs on non-believers, which is an interesting approach to liberty. Cheers –
A gimarc. I definitely get the idea.
Evan, as country, we need to go back to the early time when parents Paid for their child’s time to attend their school.
Ever since past ancestors mandated school attendance and putting it into the constitution school has declined and family and kids don’t appreciate it. Maybe if families had to pay money for their kids to go to school we can keep the kids who want to learn in school and the kids who don’t want to learn can stay home and work.
There is an injustice to All the taxpayers in this state and country who pay taxes. A portion of those taxes are paying for services they do not and no longer use because their kids are all grown.
You know that Evan when George Washington was a boy His family had to pay for him to attend his local school?
When his dad died, his widow single mother couldn’t afford the tuition, so he couldn’t attend school. He was distraught and depressed because he valued education and he wanted to become a Gentleman. But. In His favor he had an older half brother from his dad’s past marriage and his brother was in a position he had a personal library of literature and loaned each one for payment and reward Young George Washington completed his Farm chores for his mother.
When parents have to pay directly for something like their kids attending a school it can increase the number of kids who value something if it was taken away.
Actually, Evan, these homeschool parents don’t want YOUR public money. They simply want what THEY paid into the public education troth, for the education of THEIR children not YOURS!
So you should stay out of their face and their wallets!
Respectfully, Mr. Singh, what you think of upon reading my comment is your personal business and I don’t care very much. To the extent you have something interesting to say, I’ll let you know. I hope that triggers you in some way.
You make me think of left-wing, radical NEA members trying to demand my (public) money to promote their wacky beliefs.
Stay out my face and my wallet.
PS: Canada fully funds religious schools …… why can’t we? (Answer: underlying communism in the NEA, going back to the 1930s)
Ten to 12% of people are lefthanded, which is about the same percentage of people who are gay. The vast majority of people are not gay. Perhaps there is an evolutionally explanation. But it seems to me most people who are gay are as normal as people who are lefthanded.
As for the trans condition, seems like it is psychological. Surgery designed to reassign genitalia of those under the age of consent seems evil. Genitalia surgery on minors seems like a crime against minors. Last thing we should do is celebrate it.
EU ,Canada, USA, Israel (among others) have 13% ‘lefties’
Asian countries have between 2-5% left handers.
We do not have 13% homosexuality in the US ….. what are you talking about?
Its no longer ” cool” or ” special” to identify as deviant. That reduces the social rewards for proclaiming to be such
I plan on turning all Alaskans into “believers” about the homosexual community when I’m elected governor. LGBTQ for everyone. It will be mandatory.