Nothing normal about any of this…
Fads show up, fads fade away. Usually media driven, many were just patently stupid kids-being-kids stunts. Sadly, more than a few of these trends are acted upon by people who really should have known better.
Sometimes deadly, sometimes just vomit-inducing, I’m sure we all remember when sweat lodges were all the rage; Tide pods were eaten by the bowlful; cooking chicken soaked in Nyquil for a cheap (and dangerous) high; lastly, the media-hyped suicide craze of the 1980s (and finally peaked in 1990) that tried its best to convince young people that erasing themselves from the census was a reasonable solution for dealing with everything from acne to the heartbreak of psoriasis.
As it turns out, the Unholy Trinity of the Deep State, the Deep Media, and the Deep Schools have done their damnedest to convince young people that chromosomes don’t matter.
But interestingly enough, a study coming out of the University of Buckingham, Great Britain, Professor of Politics Eric Kaufmann has published a report entitled CHSS Report No. 5, The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity among Young Americans.
Here’s just a few snippets of Professor Kaufmann’s study (highlighted sections, mine);
• After surging in the 2010s and 20s, trans and queer identities are in decline among young Americans
• The transgender share among university students peaked in 2023 and has almost halved since, from nearly 7 percent to under 4 percent
• The share of students identifying as not heterosexual fell by around 10 points in the same period
• The decline in non-heterosexual share is concentrated in the queer or other sexual categories (i.e. pansexual, asexual) and, to a lesser extent, bisexuality
• Today’s freshmen are less BTQ+ than seniors, suggesting that decline will continue
• The decline in BTQ+ identification does not appear to be connected to lower social media use, religious revival, a shift to the political right or lower support for woke ideology
• There is evidence that improved mental health has reduced BTQ+ identification
This study uses data from a number of high-quality youth survey sources that have a time series over a number of years. These include the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) annual campus surveys of undergraduate students – mainly at leading research universities. FIRE surveys sample over 50,000 students per year. I also use the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) freshman survey, which is of similar size though with a more representative focus on all levels of higher education institution. However, it lacks a question on gender identity.
The large-size FIRE and HERI surveys involve only a small share of total students – perhaps 1-10 percent of the target pool, depending on the institution. Thus, in addition, I draw on several institution-level surveys which capture between a quarter and 90 percent of the target pool. These include the Andover Phillips Academy (a private elite prep school) annual student survey, which has 70-90 percent coverage, and the Brown Daily Herald spring and fall polls of Brown University students, which reach as much as 50 percent of the target population.
Two general population surveys contain relevant information. The Cooperative Election Study (CCES) samples around 60,000 Americans each year, including 2,000 to 4,000 individuals under age 25. The sample is not, however, representative of the US population. The General Social Survey (GSS) is the gold standard US social survey, designed to be representative, but its under-25 sample is usually only in the 100-200 range.
In addition, I include data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s annual Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) survey of US high school students, which reaches a representative sample of approximately 14,000-18,000 grade 9-12 pupils. The CDC’s last high school survey was in 2023.
The scale of the decline in the student data is considerable, even accounting for variability in the data. The Andover prep school sample shows a drop from over 9 percent non-binary in 2023 to 3 percent in 2025. In the much larger FIRE sample, the decline during the same period is from 6.8 to 3.6 percent of the total, a near halving of the non-binary share across a sample of 55,000-69,000 students per annum. The Brown University student survey data, whose 2025 survey captured nearly half the target population, shows a drop from around 5 percent in 2022-23 to 2.6 percent in 2025, also a halving of the non-binary share. In these cases we see a ‘rise and fall’ pattern of numbers returning to pre-surge baselines.
