The number of young Americans who identify as transgender has dropped by nearly half since peaking in 2023, an indication the gender-identity trend is rapidly going “out of fashion,” according to a newly published survey of polling data.

The percentage of university students who describe themselves as transgender fell from 6.8% in 2023 to 3.6% in 2025, according to the study, “The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity among Young Americans” by Eric Kaufmann, a professor at the University of Birmingham in England.

“Trans, queer and bisexual identities are in rapid decline among young educated Americans,” said the report released Tuesday.

The study examined data drawn from a host of “high-quality youth survey sources,” including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression poll, which samples more than 50,000 students each year, and the Higher Education Research Institute’s annual freshman survey.

The annual Andover Phillips Academy survey showed 9.2% of students identified as neither male nor female in 2023, a figure that plummeted to 3% in 2025.

The same trend was found at Brown University, where 5% of students said they were nonbinary in 2023, but just 2.6% did so two years later.

Freshmen and sophomores are also less likely to identify as transgender or queer than upperclassmen, “a sign that fashions are changing,” said Mr. Kaufmann in his analysis in UnHerd.

The study also found that the number of students identifying as non-heterosexual plummeted by about 10 percentage points, driven by a decline in those describing themselves queer, pansexual, asexual and other sexual variations.

At the same time, the number of heterosexual students rose to 77% in 2025 after bottoming out at 68% in 2023, according to the FIRE surveys.

Meanwhile, the number of gay and lesbian students remained “largely stable,” as shown in survey data from the Andover Phillips Academy.

Mr. Kaufman said it would be tempting to ascribe the decline in transgender identification to the anti-woke “vibe shift” as well as changes in religious affiliation, social-media use and religious affiliation

But he said the polling showed no significant differences in those factors.

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

One factor that has changed is mental health.

Youth mental illness increased steadily during the 2010s before peaking in 2021 and improving by 2023.

While the study said that improved mental health has played a role, that factor alone “cannot adequately explain declining trans, queer and bisexual share.”

“The postpandemic era of improving mental health appears to encompass alternative sexual orientation and gender suggesting the two trends are substantially independent over time,” the report said.

Mr. Kaufmann noted that the “startling” findings are unlikely to be welcome in progressive circles that champion the transgender movement.

“Only time will tell if the substantial decline of BTQ+ identification will continue among young Americans,” the report said. “If so, this represents a momentous and unanticipated post-progressive cultural shift in American society which is distinctly out of phase with the expectations of cultural left observers in educational institutions and legacy media outlets.”

In addition to teaching politics, Mr. Kaufmann serves as director of the university’s Centre for Heterodox Social Science.

• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.