Recent studies reveal a surprising decline in the number of young individuals who identify as nonbinary.

Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics in Vancouver, conducted an analysis using data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, along with various universities. His findings indicate a notable decrease in nonbinary identification among Generation Z starting in 2023.

The research from FIRE, which surveyed over 60,000 college students across the United States, indicates that only 3.6 percent of respondents identified as a gender outside the traditional male or female categories.

In contrast, this percentage was at 5.2 percent in 2024, and in both 2022 and 2023, 6.8 percent of students identified as nonbinary. This represents a significant drop, as the previous figures were more than double the current percentage.

Kaufmann’s examination of data from prestigious universities echoes these findings, showing a similar trend.

Andover Phillips Academy in suburban Boston, which surveys three-quarters of its students each year, for example, reported that in 2023, 9.2 percent identified as neither male nor female.

This year, the figure is at just three percent.

At Brown University, a whopping five percent of students identified as nonbinary in 2022 and 2023, but by 2025, the share dropped to 2.6 percent. 

The number of college students identifying as nonbinary has drastically plummeted

It is unclear what may have contributed to the decline, but Kaufmann notes that ‘when the trans and queer trends were at their peak, freshman were more likely to be nonconforming in their gender and sexuality than seniors.

‘Now that BTQ (bisexual, trans, queer or questioning) identification is in decline, the reverse is true: younger students are less BTQ than older students in their colleges,’ he writes for Unherd.

‘This is a sign that fashions are changing,’ even though students’ political ideologies have not changed.

Moms for Liberty, a conservative parents’ group, echoed that sentiment as it reposted the findings on social media.

‘It’s no longer “trendy” to be “trans,”‘ the group concluded. 

The groundbreaking survey marks a major turning point, after US Census Data showed that one out of every 18 young adults identified as something other than male or female in 2021 and 2022, when combined with the more than two percent who identified as transgender.

‘With 39 million 18 to 26-year-olds in the US, about two million young adults identified as trans or nonbinary – more than the population of Phoenix, the fifth-largest city in the country,’ psychology professor Jean M. Twenge wrote for TIME Magazine in 2023.

Andover Phillips Academy in suburban Boston, which surveys three-quarters of its students each year, for example, reported that in 2023, 9.2 percent identified as neither male nor female. This year, the figure is at just three percent

But a landmark 15-year study released last year found that most children who question their gender grow out of it.

Researchers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands tracked more than 2,700 children from age 11 to their mid-twenties, asking them every three years of feelings about their gender.

At the start of the research, around one-in-10 children (11 percent) expressed ‘gender non-contentedness’ to varying degrees, the researchers reported.

But by age 25, just four percent said they ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ were discontent with their gender.

The study, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, found that overall 78 percent of people had the same feelings about their gender over the 15 years.

Around 19 percent became more content with their gender and just about 2 percent became less comfortable.

The researchers concluded: ‘The results of the current study might help adolescents to realize that it is normal to have some doubts about one’s identity and one’s gender identity during this age period and that this is also relatively common.’