New data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) shows that the percentage of young people identifying as LGBTQ+ is in freefall – appearing to vindicate conservative claims that transgenderism and other fringe “identities” were always a social contagion.
According to FIRE’s poll of more than 60,000 college students in 2025, just 3.6 percent identified as a gender other than male or female. That figure is down sharply from 5.2 percent in 2024 and 6.8 percent in 2022 and 2023.
According to UnHerd, Elite schools saw the steepest drop in identification as something other than male or female. At college prep school Phillips Academy Andover, the share fell from 9.2 percent to 3 percent. Brown University reported a similar decline, from 5 percent to 2.6 percent over the same period.
While gay and lesbian identification has remained relatively stable, the percentage of young people who say they are bisexual, transgender, queer, or something else (the “BTQ+” cohort) has fallen off a cliff – ending several years of dramatic increases.
As recently as last March, Axios reported that a shocking 22.3 percent of Gen-Zers (including an astonishing 28.5 percent of Gen-Z women) identified as LGBTQ+, compared to 9.8 percent of Millennials, 4.5 percent of Gen X, 2.3 percent of Baby Boomers, and 1.1 percent of the Silent Generation. It fully appeared as if heterosexual individuals would soon be the minority among the youngest Americans.
Liberals claimed that this trend simply reflected people being more “in touch” with their “true selves.” They suggested that at least that many people had always really been LGBTQ+, they just hadn’t felt “safe” expressing it.
Conservatives, meanwhile, said that the data was obvious evidence of cultural manipulation. After decades of Hollywood, the media, and Democrat politicians demonizing “cisgender” people (liberal speak for someone who believes that his or her identity corresponds to their sex at birth) while glorifying alternative identities, it seemed obvious that young people would come to view LGBTQ+ identification as a status symbol.
LGBTQ+ identity also became a convenient way for anyone to assert higher status on the left’s victimhood hierarchy. Just by claiming to be “genderfluid,” for instance, one could claim to be part of a “marginalized community” and demand special treatment. Universities were happy to accommodate the delusion, constructing entire bureaucracies around “gender services” and “inclusion.”
But then came the cultural reckoning. Whistleblowers began exposing the horrific truth about cross-sex hormones, dangerous drug regimens, and surgeries that leave young people permanently disfigured. Documentaries like Matt Walsh’s “What Is a Woman?” laid bare the logical absurdities at the heart of the transgender movement – as well as just how militant and violent transgender activists can be.
Further backlash against companies like Target for marketing “chest binders” and “tucking underwear” to children and Bud Light for making transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney the face of its beer further confirmed that the LGBTQ+ movement – and the appeal of BTQ+ identities in particular – was losing its cultural appeal.
President Donald Trump’s victory last year, specifically his strong performance with voters under 30, confirmed that BTQ+ identity and the influence of left-wing gender ideology have seriously waned. Trump ran on a platform of banning transgender drugs and surgeries for minors and eradicating gender ideology from government policies. Americans responded by handing him a sweeping popular vote and Electoral College victory.
During the peak years of the influence of the LGBTQ+ movement, freshmen college students were more likely than seniors to identify as bisexual, transgender, or “queer.” Today, the pattern has reversed, another sign that LGBTQ+ identity was always caused by social pressure rather than some sort of internal awakening about being born in the “wrong” body.
This 180 is not being driven by a return to religion or a shift to conservative politics, either. Among college students, political and religious identifications have stayed roughly the same.
What has changed is the social reward once attached to these identities. During the surge, identifying as trans or nonbinary carried cultural currency – attention, affirmation, novelty, even moral prestige. Now that currency is fading, and younger people are no longer interested in such “alternative identities” as a result.
Data on mental health trends also reinforces the idea that BTQ+ identification was driven by deeper issues of despair and confusion. Adolescent depression peaked during the pandemic and showed early signs of easing by 2023, according to federal surveys – corresponding with a dramatic rise in self-reported transgender and other nonbinary identities. Now, youth mental health has begun to rebound.
In addition to proving conservatives exactly correct, what this shift makes clear is that the approach conservatives advocated for – slowing down, asking questions, involving parents – these were not acts of cruelty. They bought time. And time, as the data now shows, is often all that was needed for young people to realize that they really just needed to be “affirmed” that the body they were born into is the only correct one for them.
Conservatives may be quick to celebrate declining LGBTQ+ identification as a cultural victory – and it is. But it is also important to not forget that the young people who are now coming to their senses were led astray by an evil and twisted ideology, and they deserve compassion. Millions of young boys and girls really did believe – and many more still do – that they were born in the wrong body and that drugs and surgery are the answer to their anxieties about growing up and maturing.
This reversal also should not be mistaken for the end of the battle. Trends that rise through social contagion can fall the same way and return. Many of the same forces that pushed this movement upward, from online validation to institutional compliance, are still in place. If this was a wave, another can follow.
Still, conservatives can take heart that their efforts are indeed having an impact – and more kids will have the opportunity to grow up, deal with all the growing pains of adolescence, and live normal, healthy lives as adults as a result.
Sarah Katherine Sisk is a proud Hillsdale College alumna and a master’s student in economics at George Mason University. You can follow her on X @SKSisk76.
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