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).