(LifeSiteNews) — The share of American teenagers who self-identify as homosexual or bisexual is on the decline, according to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC has released its biennial National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which “provides a snapshot of the health and well-being of high school students in the United States in 2025 and changes over the past 2 and 10 years” in the areas of diet, physical activity, sleep, online behavior, mental health, and suicide risk.
While the report only highlights a cross-section of issues the CDC considers statistically significant, San Diego State University psychology professor Jean Twenge reviewed the full data available through the CDC’s data system and found that “younger teens are now much less likely to say they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual.”
Sixteen percent of 17-18 year olds identified as “LGB” (lesbian, gay, or bisexual), which was the highest amount for any subset of teens but a two-point drop from 2023. All younger groups were smaller and showed a bigger drop, with the most significant being 14-15 year olds, 17 percent of whom identified as LGBT in 2023 down to 11 percent in 2025.
Twenge, who noted she’s been on both sides of whether past data supported such claims, said that the “striking” result “really does look like a free fall,” which “appears to be driven almost entirely by girls.”
She added that the shift was largely due to girls ceasing to identify as bisexual, from 26 percent of 9th grade girls in 2021 to just 13 percent in 2025.
The prior sharp increase shows how stark the change has been. “Between 2015 and 2021, the number of high school-aged girls identifying as LGB increased by 128 percent, while the self-identification of boys as LGB nearly doubled, increasing by 99 percent, between 2015 and 2023,” the Daily Caller notes. “Thus, 9th grade girls were the largest factor in the latest drop, with the percentage of girls identifying as LGB nearly cut in half, decreasing from 30 percent in 2021 to 17 percent in 2025.”
The data also show that reported feelings of sadness or hopelessness declined from 40 percent in 2023 to 33 percent in 2025, and poor mental health from 29 percent to 23 percent. More significantly, students planning for suicide declined from 16 percent to 12 percent, and actual suicide attempts fell from 9 percent to 6 percent.
Twenge declined to offer a possible cause for the shift in sexual self-identification, but others suggested it was further evidence that such trends among impressionable youth are at least partially attributable to cultural influences, rather than being innate, hardwired sexual attraction. One possible explanation could be the number of teenage girls in recent years who have experienced the consequences of transgender “accommodation” of biological males in girls’ sports, restrooms, and lockers.
The findings come as a widespread cultural backlash to the LGBT lobby’s aggressive transgender advocacy appears to have extended to a smaller but perceptible shift away from “LGB” as well as “T.” In July, an Economist/YouGov poll found for the second time that support for same-sex “marriage” had fallen to 54 percent – still a majority, but considerably lower than the 65 percent and higher previously found by Gallup.