The number of ninth-grade girls identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual dropped from 30 to 17 percent in just 4 years.
A new analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data has revealed that young teens are far less likely to identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) than they were in recent years, specifically among 9th grade girls. Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, said that such identities are in a “free fall.”
The CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey, which is administered to high schoolers every two years, has found a decline in LGB identities in all grades from 2023 to 2025, with the decline getting steeper as students get younger.
For seniors in high school, those identifying as LGB declined from 18 percent in 2023 to 16 percent in 2025. In contrast, those identifying as LGB in 9th grade fell from 17 percent in 2023 to 11 percent in 2025. Twenge wrote, “That really does look like a free fall.”
She noted that the decline appeared to be driven largely by girls, with the number of girls identifying as LGB dropping from to 27 percent in 2023 to 22 percent in 2025. Among boys, it dropped from just nine percent to seven percent in the same timeframe. Girls had also seen the largest increase in those identifying as LGB, with a 128 percent increase taking place between 2015 and 2021, and a 99 percent increase taking place for boys between 2015 and 2023.
Among girls, the largest decline was seen among ninth graders, with the number of those identifying as LGB dropping from 30 percent in 2021 to 17 percent in 2025, a nearly 50 percent drop. In contrast, the change seen in 12th-grade girls went from 26 percent in 2021 to 28 percent in 2023 to 25 percent in 2025.
The number of ninth-grade girls identifying specifically as bisexual dropped by 50 percent, from 26 percent in 2021 to 13 percent in 2025.
Twenge noted that the general consensus forming is that Gen Z ends with those born in 2009, and Gen Alpha begins with those born in 2010. Ninth graders in the spring of 2025 were kids born in either 2009 or 2010. “So we might be seeing the beginning of a generational shift. The sharp turn downward in identifying (and acting) as LGB among Gen Alpha teens could be a harbinger of a coming wave of change, or it could be a blip — it’s hard to say,” Twenge wrote.
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