Fewer Young People Are Identifying as Trans, Non-Binary, or Non-Heterosexual: A new report suggests the recent surge in non-traditional identities may have peaked (Steve Stewart-Williams, Oct 14, 2025, Nature-Nurture)
First things first, it’s not that young people have become less woke, more religious, or more conservative. It’s also not that they’re spending less time on social media. Kaufmann tested all those hypotheses, and found no support for any of them.
One hypothesis he did find some support for, though, is that the trend is partly due to changes in mental health. Youth mental health hit a low point during the pandemic, and has since bounced back to some degree. Consistent with the idea that this shift drove changes in identification, statistically controlling for mental health weakens the time trend considerably. It doesn’t eliminate it entirely, however, so it can’t just be down to changes in mental health.
Another possibility is that identifying as non-binary or non-heterosexual was, to some extent, a youth fashion that’s now going out of fashion. As Kaufmann put it, the decline “seems most similar to the fading of a fashion or trend. It happened largely independently of shifts in political beliefs and social media use, though improved mental health played a role.”