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A new study has revealed a steep decline in “trans” and “queer” identification among US university students, marking another unexpected Gen Z culture shift.

The percentage of young Americans identifying as “transgender” or “queer” has nearly halved since 2023, according to a new study that’s upending long-held assumptions about Generation Z.

Data analysed by Professor Eric Kaufmann of the Centre for Heterodox Social Science reveals that the share of students identifying as a gender other than male or female has fallen sharply in the last two years.

Writing for Unherd, Kaufmann explained that in 2025, “just 3.6% of respondents identified as a gender other than male or female” while “the figure was 5.2% in 2024 and 6.8% in both 2022 and 2023”.

The report, titled The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity among Young Americans, draws on survey data from more than 60,000 undergraduates collected by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

Kaufmann described the data as “a startling and unanticipated post-progressive development”.

Collapse in Elite Campuses

The decline is most obvious in elite institutions, once seen as bastions of gender ideology.

At Andover Phillips Academy in suburban Boston, 9.2% of students identified as neither male nor female in 2023. This year, that number dropped to just 3%.

Similarly, at Brown University, the figure fell from 5% in 2022–2023 to only 2.6% in 2025.

Surveys tracking sexual orientation yielded a similar trend. After rising steadily for more than a decade, the proportion of students identifying as “bisexual”, “queer”, or “questioning” has fallen by almost ten percentage points since 2023 across most datasets.

Curiously, the age pattern has also reversed. When “trans” and “queer” identification peaked, first-year students were more likely than seniors to describe themselves as “nonconforming” in gender or sexuality.

Now, the opposite is true, with younger cohorts entering university less likely to identify as “trans”, “bisexual”, or “queer” than those who preceded them.

Kaufmann identifies this pattern as “a clear sign that fashions are changing” and that “social trends are not fixed — they rise and fall like other cultural waves”.

Searching for Causes

Professor Kaufmann was less emphatic about the reasons behind the sharp declines.

His study explored several potential causes — from mental health trends to political attitudes and social media use — but none fully accounted for the change.

Rates of depression and anxiety among American teenagers have dropped since 2021–22, which may have contributed to the shift.

However, the report found that the positive mental health trend began earlier than the fall in “trans” identification, suggesting other forces are involved.

Likewise, political ideology on campuses has remained largely stable. Despite talk of an “anti-woke vibe shift,” surveys show little change in students’ left-right alignment or their attitudes on silencing dissent.

Kaufmann’s analysis also noted that religious affiliation among students — a key factor that normally drives moral and sexual values — has not significantly increased. Nearly half of respondents still described themselves as non-religious.

In other words, the cultural context that fostered the earlier rise of gender ideology has not disappeared — yet identification with it is fading. He suggests this points to a deeper fatigue with the social and moral instability of recent years.

“Trans and queer identification have declined among young Americans even as levels of wokeness and irreligion have not,” Kaufmann concluded. “For young people, gender and sexual identity are now independent fashions that rise and fall separately from other cultural and political currents.”

American campuses, once known as incubators of radical ideology, may now be early indicators of a broad shift back towards realism.

If shifts on elite US campuses tend to forecast wider social change, Westerners are right to ask if this moment provides further evidence still of a growing spiritual hunger in Generation Z.

Eric Kaufmann’s full report, “The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity among Young Americans,” is available via the Centre for Heterodox Social Science.

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Cartoon by Brian Doyle.