Younger teens are now much less likely to say they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual

(especially girls -- and yes, that goes for sexual behavior, too)

Is identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual “in free fall” among young people in the last few years – or is it relatively stable?

I’ve been on both sides of this question. At first I found a decline in identifying as LGB among U.S. 18- to 24-year-olds with early data from 2025, but that decline disappeared when the full year of data for 2025 became available.

But that’s among adults. Some of the samples in the “free fall” report were from high school students and entering college students. Now that 2025 data from the Youth Risk Survey of U.S. 9^th to 12^th graders from the CDC has been released, we can get a much better idea of how sexual orientation has changed among youth.

The trends are striking. They are also very different depending on age (or, in this case, grade).

For 12^th graders, 17 and 18 years old, identifying as LGB declines only a few percentage points between 2023 and 2025 (from 18% to 16%). There’s more of a decline for 11^th graders (16 and 17 years old) and more still for 10^th graders (15 and 16 years old) – you can see the lines fan out on the far right of the figure (see Figure 1).

But the headline result is for 9^th graders (14 and 15 years old): Identifying as LGB absolutely plummets between 2023 and 2025, from 17% to 11%. That really does look like a free fall.

Figure 1: Identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, U.S. high school students, by grade, 2015-2025. Source: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, CDC. Note: Because the “other” response varied by year, the denominator is those identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or heterosexual/straight, excluding “I identify another way,” “I am not sure,” and “I don’t understand what this means” responses.

The decline appears to be driven almost entirely by girls. Identifying as LGB dropped from 27% in 2023 to 22% in 2025 among girls, and from 9% to 7% among boys (see Figure 2). The previous increase in identifying as LGB was also larger among girls, with a 128% increase (more than doubling) from 2015 to 2021 among girls and a 99% increase (doubling) from 2015 to 2023 among boys.

Figure 2: Identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, U.S. high school students, by sex, 2015-2025. Source: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, CDC.

As with the combined data in Figure 1, the decline is by far the largest among 9^th grade girls, where identifying as LGB dropped from 30% in 2021 to 17% in 2025, nearly cutting the numbers in half (see Figure 3). The changes among (for example) 12^th grade girls are much smaller, from 26% in 2021 to 28% in 2023 and 25% in 2025.

Figure 3: Identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, U.S. high school girls, by grade, 2015-2025. Source: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, CDC.

Much of the change in LGB identification among girls is a drop in identifying as bisexual. Figure 4 shows the trend for girls by grade. Once again, the 9^th graders show the largest change. While 26% of 9^th grade girls identified as bisexual in 2021, only 13% -- half as many -- did in 2025.

Figure 4: Identifying as bisexual, U.S. high school girls, by grade, 2015-2025. Source: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, CDC.

Of course, identifying as LGB doesn’t reflect actual behavior. Saying you are gay and having sex with partners of the same sex are certainly correlated, but don’t have perfect overlap. The YRBS survey also asks about sex partners, though, so we can see if there have been any changes in behavior as well. We’ll look at the percentage of sexually active teens who have had at least one same-sex partner. Keep in mind that most high school students are not sexually active, so this is only a subsample of the larger group.

For boys, there’s been a fairly steady rise in same-sex partners, not too different from the pattern of identifying as LGB among boys in Figure 2. The story is different for girls, where having non-heterosexual sex peaked in 2021 and then fell steeply (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: Percent of sexually active high school students who have had at least one same-sex partner, 2015-2025. Source: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, CDC.

Once again, the declines are largest among 9^th grade girls (though it’s similar among 10^th graders, and 11^th graders also show a big drop between 2023 and 2025). The drop is much less among 12^th grade girls (see Figure 6). Although the changes in behavior differ somewhat from the trends in identifying as LGB, they also suggest that high school girls, especially younger girls, are no longer as likely to have same-sex partners.

Figure 6: Percent of sexually active high school girls who have had at least one same-sex partner, by grade, 2015-2025. Source: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, CDC.

(It’s also worth noting how high these numbers are for younger teen girls compared to older ones. Remember this is among teens who are sexually active, and that’s a lower number among younger teens. For girls, having sex with each other might be a more common method of sexual debut, but among those who wait to have sex more have sex with boys).

These trends are especially striking given the relative stability of identifying as LGB among young adults ages 18 to 24. Together with these results for teens, the pattern appears to be little change among those 17 and older, but notable declines among those 16 and younger, especially those 15 and under. This is a generational or cohort effect, with different trends over the years for different age groups.

In spring 2025, 9^th graders were born in 2009 or 2010. There’s still debate over when Gen Z ends, but a consensus seems to be forming that Gen Z ends with those born in 2009 and Gen Alpha begins with those born in 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.

So why are both LGB identification and behavior declining so much among 14- and 15-year-old girls? The increase in identifying as LGB from 2019 to 2021 was large across all four grades; if there was a COVID effect, it affected everyone. But post-pandemic trends, especially between 2023 and 2025, are strikingly different by grade/age. What happened during this time that impacted 9^th grade girls the most, especially their LGB identification and behavior?

I have to confess: I have no idea. I’d love to hear yours.