New federal survey data suggest the share of young adults who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual has fallen from its recent peak, according to psychologist Jean M. Twenge’s analysis of the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
Looking at BRFSS responses from 2014 through 2025, Twenge found that among adults ages 18 to 24, identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual peaked in 2022 at 20% before dropping to just over 15% by 2025 — a 21% decline in just three years.
The changes show up first, and most clearly, among the youngest adults.
“For now, this is a classic generational shift, with the changes first and largest among the youngest group,” Twenge wrote in her newsletter, Generation Tech.
Twenge said the biggest swing inside the 18-to-24 group is not gay or lesbian identification.
“It’s definitely identifying as bisexual, especially among young women,” she wrote.
In BRFSS data, the share of women ages 18 to 24 identifying as bisexual rose from 8% in 2015 to 23% in 2022, then fell to less than 18% by 2025, a 23% decline in 3 years. This shift drives almost all of the change in the broader trend among young adults.
BRFSS is the federal government’s largest ongoing health survey, administered by the CDC, with samples of more than 200,000 adults each year. Twenge wrote that the 2024 data is fully out, and that the dataset also includes 2025 responses, though she noted 2025 is “12,000 — much smaller than a full year, but a large sample size compared to many other surveys.” She excluded 2020 because data collection paused for much of the year during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Twenge’s report also follows debate last year about whether gender identity identification was declining among young people. She wrote that researcher Eric Kaufmann’s claim that “trans identification is in free fall among the young” was “a little premature” because his sources measured nonbinary identification rather than transgender identification and were not nationally representative. Still, she said that after reviewing the best available data, she concluded Kaufmann was “probably right.”
“Identifying as transgender and non-binary really did decline among U.S. young adults after 2023, and even among teens as young as 13,” Twenge wrote.
Taken together, Twenge wrote, the recent responses suggest fewer U.S. adults identified as part of the LGBTQ+ population in 2024 and 2025 than in 2021 and 2022 because “fewer identify outside the gender binary, and fewer identify as a sexual minority.”
“The cyclical nature of these changes, especially their appearance among the youngest adults, suggests a cultural shift — one that might grow or fade during the coming years,” she concluded.
