Share of Teen Girls Identifying as Lesbian or Bisexual Has Dropped Sharply, per CDC Data Cited by the Washington Post
A Four-Year "Free Fall"
The share of teenage girls who identify as lesbian or bisexual has dropped sharply in just four years, per CDC data highlighted by The Washington Post.
Among ninth-grade girls, the share identifying as lesbian or bisexual fell from 30 percent in 2021 to 17 percent in 2025, per the CDC data.
Bisexual identification drove most of the decline. Among ninth-grade girls, bisexual identity alone fell from 26 percent in 2021 to 13 percent in 2025, cut in half in four years.
"It really does look like a free fall," said Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University. "But what's causing it is unclear."
Where the Numbers Come From
The figures come from Twenge's analysis of the CDC's 2025 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System data, which she published on her Substack, "Generation Tech."
The CDC survey covers a nationally representative sample of public and private high school students in grades 9 through 12.
The pattern is concentrated in the youngest students. Boys' rates of identifying as gay or bisexual have stayed roughly flat for a decade, per the Post.
Older teens moved far less. Rates among older teenage girls have remained relatively steady and are still higher than before the pandemic, the Post reported, while one analysis put overall ninth-grade lesbian, gay or bisexual identification at 17 percent in 2023 and 11 percent in 2025.
Nobody Has a Clean Explanation
Twenge cautioned against a simple political reading, noting the declines began while President Joe Biden was still in office. "If it was politics, why would that only have an effect on ninth-graders and not 17- and 18-year-olds?" she asked. "It maybe has something to do with it, but it's clearly not the only thing going on. It's a mystery."
Conservative activists credited the current administration anyway. "Amazing what happens when you cut the Department of Education and USAID," Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, wrote on X.
Researchers cautioned that longer-term data will be needed to tell whether the shift is a lasting change or a temporary fluctuation, and the available data does not explain why a cultural or political shift would affect one age group so much more than others.
What This Means for Markets
This is a data story, not an earnings story, and there is no honest ticker that trades directly on teen identity surveys.
The read-through is second order. Advertisers, media companies and platforms that built youth marketing strategies around the pandemic-era surge in identification are working from a moving baseline, which is context for social and media names like META and SNAP rather than a reason to trade them.
For most traders, the value of the CDC release is as a sentiment marker: the cultural assumptions priced into consumer and media strategies can reverse faster than the strategies built on top of them.
Bottom Line
In four years, the share of ninth-grade girls calling themselves lesbian or bisexual fell from 30 percent to 17 percent, and bisexual identification was cut in half. Researchers can measure the drop precisely. They just cannot explain it yet.
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