The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey is a nationwide survey of high school students administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is conducted every two years.
The 2025 YRBS found a steep drop in the share of high school students who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual over the past four years. The largest decline was among 9th grade girls identifying as bisexual: Their share fell from 26% in 2021 to 13% in 2025, a 50% decrease.
The decline extended across every grade, though none matched the drop among 9th grade girls. The share of girls identifying as bisexual fell from 24% to 18% among 10th graders, from 21% to 17% among 11th graders, and from 22.5% to 18% among 12th graders.
The data showed a significant increase in bisexual identification across the board between 2015 and 2017.
But the steepest rise came over the period between 2019 and 2021. Over that two-year period, 9th grade girls identifying as bisexual jumped from 12.5% to 26%, from 15% to 24% among 10th graders, from 16% to 22% among 11th graders, and from 14% to 22.5% among 12th graders.
The spike in these numbers between 2019 and 2021 is not a mystery. America’s embrace of progressive identity politics had reached a fever pitch during those years.
The COVID lockdowns also gave students endless time to spend online, where they encountered a steady stream of messages about sexual identity. For some teenagers, identifying as gay or bisexual may have come to feel like a way to fit in.
I disagree with the takeaway in the X post below: American teens are not “becoming straight again.” I would argue that many of the teenagers who claimed to be bisexual in the survey were probably not bisexual at all. Adolescence is a time of confusion, and teenagers are especially susceptible to cultural influences.
With all that time on their hands during the pandemic, some came to think that they might be bisexual. After the lockdowns ended and the woke fever that had gripped the nation subsided, those who weren’t actually bisexual forgot all about their earlier ideas. And the numbers returned to previous levels.
American teens are becoming straight again, with – especially – female bisexuality in sharp retreat in the youngest cohorts.
via @jean_twenge:https://t.co/FQnZZePmNp pic.twitter.com/SbJUV7o5eF
— Eric Kaufmann (@epkaufm) September 28, 2026
Curiously, the CDC website’s YRBS page does not include the 2025 results released last week. Instead, visitors are told that “per a court order,” the page reflects only data published prior to January 29, 2025. The note explains:
Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from truth. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology due to the harms and divisiveness it causes. This page does not reflect reality and therefore the Administration and this Department reject it.
At any rate, the YRBS graphic was originally posted on X by college professor Jean Twenge.
In a separate post, she reported, “There’s also a decline in LGB sex among younger teens who are sexually active, so it’s not just identification.”
There’s also a decline in LGB sex among younger teens who are sexually active, so it’s not just identification. Details in Generation Tech: https://t.co/yJa1TXYrPy
— Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) (@jean_twenge) September 28, 2026
She also noted that although the survey showed that lesbian, gay, and bisexual identification among high school has plummeted — according to the CDC data — “older teens show relative stability, consistent with data from young adults.”
On her Substack website, Generation Tech, she expanded on that point. While Twenge acknowledges the drop in LGB identification among high school students, she wrote:
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.
Twenge doesn’t tell us if there had been a spike in LGB identification from 2019 to 2021 for 18- to 24-year-olds or if it had been relatively stable. And the distinction matters.
We can only speculate, but I suspect LGB identification among young adults rose less sharply between 2019 and 2021 — if at all — than it did among high school students.
If that is the case, the divergence between the two age groups may tell us something about the pandemic years. Younger teens were navigating adolescence amid lockdowns, social isolation and an online culture intensely focused on identity. While the YRBS cannot tell us why the high school students’ responses changed, the speed of the rise and subsequent fall suggests that the cultural climate may have been responsible.
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