College students identifying as trans and non-binary absolutely craters in just two years

The number of Gen Z Americans identifying as transgender or non-binary has rapidly declined since 2023, a new study has found.

Survey data out this year from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) shows approximately 3.6% of undergraduate students in the United States still claim to be something other than male or female. However, that number represents a significant decline from the prior year, a report by the Centre for Heterodox Social Science found.

In 2024, 5.2% of U.S. undergraduates claimed a transgender or non-binary identity, and in both 2022 and 2023, that number was 6.8%, according to the data. The most recent survey, conducted in 2025, found that just 3.6% of students identified as something other than male or female, a nearly 50% decline since 2023.

While several theories have circulated about what has been behind the rising adoption of nonbiological gender identities — such as social contagion, social media, or mental health-related issues — the change in the trendline may itself point to some answers.

As the report’s author speculates, mental health disorders like depression and anxiety have begun declining over a similar time frame for American college students. After an alarming 44% of university students showed signs of depression in 2022, that number dropped to 41% in 2023 and 38% in 2024, according to a survey from The Economist. It marked the first positive trend in the data in more than 15 years.

Interestingly, the shift away from gender ideology does not appear to be part of a broader political shift. FIRE’s 2025 report found a rising number of students support leftist tactics such as using violence to stop speech they disagree with.

Social contagion is another widespread theory on what is behind the surge in young people who claim to be something other than a man or woman. One 2023 study found that more than half of teen girls who claimed to be transgender had friends who also claimed to be transgender, and that teens of both sexes were more likely to claim a transgender identity when they had friends who were also transgender. Even with politics among youth remaining stable and teens’ social media use remaining high, transgender identities may simply be growing less trendy.

Despite the promising statistics, a report published in August by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute found that transgenderism among 13 to 17-year-olds is rapidly rising, with a whopping 724,000 kids, 3.3%, claiming not to identify with their biological sex.

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