Report: Sharp decline in trans-identifying youth between 2023 and 2025

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(The Center Square) – A sharp decline in Gen Z Americans identifying as transgender and queer has occurred, from 6.8% identifying as a gender other than male or female in 2023 compared to 3.6% stating so in 2025, according to a report.

The report’s author, professor of Politics Eric Kaufmann, told The Center Square he thinks this drop in transgender young people “signals one of the first shifts away from progressive non-conformity of lifestyle and self-expression in 60 years.”

Kaufmann told The Center Square: “I believe we could be at the start of a gradual change toward a more post-progressive society, somewhat more socially conservative – or at least not as socially radical.”

Kaufmann also said to The Center Square that “there are many” implications to his report. 

“First, that social influences are an important factor in the rise and decline of trans, queer and bisexual identity among young people since the 2010s,” Kaufmann said. 

“Second, that gender and sexual identity seems to operate relatively independently of politics and culture war attitudes among young people,” Kaufmann said.

For instance, in an X post on the subject, Kaufmann wrote that the shift in queer and trans identification is not actually due to the youth becoming “less woke, more religious or more conservative,” because “those beliefs remained stable throughout the 2020s.”

Kaufmann told The Center Square that his third and final listed point on the implications of his report was “that improving mental health is connected to this trend [of declining Gen Z transgenderism], though only partially.” 

Better mental health certainly appears to play a part in the decline in trans and queer identifying young Americans, as “less anxious and, especially, depressed, students [are] linked with a smaller share identifying as trans, queer or bisexual,” Kaufmann wrote on X. 

Kaufmann additionally noted to The Center Square that “it does not appear that these shifts are related to social media consumption patterns.”

Interestingly, as Kaufmann wrote on X, “freshmen in 2024-25 were less trans and queer than seniors whereas it was the reverse when BTQ+ identity was surging in 2022-23,” suggesting that “gender/sexual non-conformity will continue to fall.”  

Policy director at family advocacy group American Principles Project Paul Dupont told The Center Square that the findings of Kaufmann’s report “should be seen as good news.” 

“Adopting an identity at odds with one's biology is not healthy, so any report showing more people embracing their bodies rather than rejecting them is a positive development,” Dupont said. 

“While it's too early to say with certainty, one hopes that this decline will make it easier to root out gender ideology from its remaining strongholds,” Dupont said.

“Many blue states and cities still allow men to access women's private spaces and sports,” Dupont said. “Many hospitals and clinics still perform gender transition procedures on minors. Many school districts still keep parents in the dark if their child is struggling with gender dysphoria.” 

“All of these policies must be repealed wherever they are still in force, and having more members of Gen Z acknowledge biological reality will only help hasten that process,” Dupont said. 

Dupont advised that “advocates for sanity should be cautious not to declare victory yet.” 

“Although we are making progress, gender ideology remains entrenched in many powerful American institutions, and Democrats have refused to moderate one inch in response to their election loss last year,” Dupont said. “There is still a difficult road ahead.”

Much of the information going into Kaufmann’s report came from raw data found in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) annual survey of college students – the College Free Speech Rankings Survey – with more than 60,000 polled in 2025.

As stated by Kaufmann in an article on his report, “just 3.6% of respondents [to FIRE’s survey] identified as a gender other than male or female,” in 2025.

“By comparison, the figure was 5.2% in 2024 and 6.8% in both 2022 and 2023,” Kaufmann wrote. “In other words, the share of trans-identified students has effectively halved in just two years.”

FIRE told The Center Square that its survey “looks at student attitudes for free expression and is conducted for that purpose.” 

FIRE explained that “as a side effect of asking demographic questions of so many respondents (68,000 this year), one can glean trends in demographics as Prof Kauffman has done here.” 

“We make our data available to the public for free on this page to encourage academics or members of the public to dive in and see what findings they're able to uncover beyond the analyses that we ourselves are able to run,” FIRE told The Center Square.