{"id":17702,"date":"2025-10-16T18:50:43","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T18:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=17702"},"modified":"2025-10-16T19:59:51","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T19:59:51","slug":"sharp-decline-in-trans-identifying-youth-between-2023-and-2025-report-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=17702","title":{"rendered":"Sharp Decline in Trans-identifying Youth Between 2023 and 2025, Report Says"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/report-sharp-decline-in-trans-identifying-youth-between-2023-and-2025\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Voters<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The report\u2019s author, professor of Politics Eric Kaufmann, told The Center Square he thinks this drop in transgender young people \u201csignals one of the first shifts away from progressive non-conformity of lifestyle and self-expression in 60 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaufmann told The Center Square: \u201cI believe we could be at the start of a gradual change toward a more post-progressive society, somewhat more socially conservative \u2013 or at least not as socially radical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaufmann also said to The Center Square that \u201cthere are many\u201d implications to his report.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, that social influences are an important factor in the rise and decline of trans, queer and bisexual identity among young people since the 2010s,\u201d Kaufmann said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecond, that gender and sexual identity seems to operate relatively independently of politics and culture war attitudes among young people,\u201d Kaufmann said.<\/p>\n

For instance, in an X post<\/a> on the subject, Kaufmann wrote that the shift in queer and trans identification is not actually due to the youth becoming \u201cless woke, more religious or more conservative,\u201d because \u201cthose beliefs remained stable throughout the 2020s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaufmann told The Center Square that his third and final listed point on the implications of his report was \u201cthat improving mental health is connected to this trend [of declining Gen Z transgenderism], though only partially.\u201d<\/p>\n

Better mental health certainly appears to play a part in the decline in trans and queer identifying young Americans, as \u201cless anxious and, especially, depressed, students [are] linked with a smaller share identifying as trans, queer or bisexual,\u201d Kaufmann wrote<\/a> on X.<\/p>\n

Kaufmann additionally noted to The Center Square that \u201cit does not appear that these shifts are related to social media consumption patterns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interestingly, as Kaufmann wrote<\/a> on X, \u201cfreshmen in 2024-25 were less trans and queer than seniors whereas it was the reverse when BTQ+ identity was surging in 2022-23,\u201d suggesting that \u201cgender\/sexual non-conformity will continue to fall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Policy director at family advocacy group American Principles Project Paul Dupont told The Center Square that the findings of Kaufmann\u2019s report \u201cshould be seen as good news.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAdopting 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,\u201d Dupont said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile 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,\u201d Dupont said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany blue states and cities still allow men to access women’s private spaces and sports,\u201d Dupont said. \u201cMany 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll 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,\u201d Dupont said.<\/p>\n

Dupont advised that \u201cadvocates for sanity should be cautious not to declare victory yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough 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,\u201d Dupont said. \u201cThere is still a difficult road ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the information going into Kaufmann\u2019s report came from raw data found in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression\u2019s (FIRE) annual survey of college students \u2013 the College Free Speech Rankings Survey \u2013 with more than 60,000 polled in 2025.<\/p>\n

As stated by Kaufmann in an article<\/a> on his report<\/a>, \u201cjust 3.6% of respondents [to FIRE\u2019s survey] identified as a gender other than male or female,\u201d in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy comparison, the figure was 5.2% in 2024 and 6.8% in both 2022 and 2023,\u201d Kaufmann wrote. \u201cIn other words, the share of trans-identified students has effectively halved in just two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

FIRE told The Center Square that its survey \u201clooks at student attitudes for free expression and is conducted for that purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

FIRE explained that \u201cas 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe make our data available to the public for free on this page<\/a> 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,\u201d FIRE told The Center Square.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/report-sharp-decline-in-trans-identifying-youth-between-2023-and-2025\/ A sharp decline in Gen Z Americans identifying as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17702"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17704,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17702\/revisions\/17704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}