The report likens the drop in transgender identification to a fading fad.
A newly released report suggests transgender identification among Generation Z in America has lost momentum after peaking in 2023.
Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at the University of Buckingham in the United Kingdom, released a report titled “The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity among Young Americans,” an analysis of college-age students in the United States using seven data pools.
The report from the Centre for Heterodox Social Science, described as promoting open inquiry in “progressive academia,” indicated that transgender identification among college students is half of what it was when the trend peaked in 2023, having dropped from 7 to 4 percent.
​Likewise, those who identify as “nonbinary,” meaning neither male nor female, dropped by half in three of five data sources used.
​The report suggests a return of heterosexual identification as well, though numbers remain lower than in 2020. Those identifying as gay and lesbian remained relatively stable.
​The indication is that the downward transgender trend will continue.
For the 2024–2025 period, the report indicated fewer first-year college students identified as “trans or queer” compared to seniors—the opposite of what the data showed for the 2022–2023.
​“This suggests that gender/sexual non-conformity will continue to fall,” Kaufmann wrote on X in a post sharing his findings.
​Kaufmann likened the reduction in transgender and nonbinary identities to a fad.
​“The fall of trans and queer seems most similar to the fading of a fashion or trend,” he wrote. “It happened largely independently of shifts in political beliefs and social media use, though improved mental health played a role.”
​“Less anxious and, especially, depressed students [are] linked with a smaller share identifying as trans, queer or bisexual,” he added.
​Main data sources for the study include surveys from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Higher Education Research Institute freshman survey, the Andover Phillips Academy prep school, Brown University student polling from the Brown Daily Herald, the Cooperative Election Study, the General Social Survey, and youth data from the Centers for Disease Control.
Andrew Brown, vice president of policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, called the report “fascinating,” but cautioned about reading too much into it, saying further analysis and data were needed to establish a trend.
Brown told the Epoch Times that a multitude of studies from different institutions and countries were used in support of the 2023 Texas legislation banning medical procedures and hormones for children with gender dysphoria.
Kaufmann’s report stood out to Brown because it likened the falling transgender numbers to those of a fading fad or trend and connected the changes to mental health.
​“It’s kind of wild that this was a fad, and you have a bunch of people in the United States who permanently destroyed their health,” he said. “They permanently destroyed their physical bodies because it was cool.”
