Is Being Trans No Longer Cool? Number of College Students Who Identify As Trans, Non-Binary Plummets.

For most of us, we look back on our younger years, whether they were spent as college students, broke twenty-somethings, or something else, usually fondly. It's that time period where you leave home to get your foot in the door of life and learn how to support yourself, not just financially, but in many other ways as well.

But we still carry some of that old high school baggage of just wanting to be "cool" and fit in with our friends, for whom many of us become our second family. But as our lives evolve, so do the things we think are cool.

The latest thing to be losing its coolness among Gen Zers, thankfully, is identifying as transgender or nonbinary. A recent survey of Gen Zers from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) found that roughly 3.6 percent of undergraduate students in the U.S. identify as neither male nor female. That number fell by half from its peak in 2023 at seven percent, according to a report from the Centre for Heterodox Social Science. In 2024, that number was at 5.2 percent.

It’s no longer “trendy” to be “trans.”

“…the fact both have declined sharply in just two years is a startling and unanticipated post-progressive development that the education and media establishments will be reluctant to acknowledge.” pic.twitter.com/0qJZ5aMGps
— Moms for Liberty (@Moms4Liberty) October 14, 2025

There are several things that could explain the drop in trans and non-binary identification. One of the main causes could be an overall uptick in the mental health of the nation's young people. In post-pandemic 2022, a disturbing 44 percent of college students showed signs of depression. That number continued to drop, to 41 percent in 2023 and 38 percent in 2024. It was the first positive trend in over a decade. It's no wonder that many Gen Zers who came of age during the pandemic had their formative years of social interaction greatly stunted. Depending on where they live, they could have spent literally years only interacting with people other than family members in their own house, exclusively online.

LGBTQIA+: It is no longer cool to be nonbinary. pic.twitter.com/yV62Xz3LOX
— @amuse (@amuse) October 14, 2025

Which brings us to another culprit, social media. It's no secret that teens and young people are more connected to social media than ever. A December 2024 Pew Research Survey showed that 90 percent of teens said they used YouTube in 2022, 60 percent said they frequented TikTok and Instagram, and 55 percent used Snapchat. Facebook and X seemed less popular among teens, probably because their parents use them as well. Facebook's numbers were at 32 percent, down from 71 percent in 2014-15, and 17 percent said they used X, also down from 23 percent in 2022. Bringing up the rear for social media use among young people were sites like WhatsApp, Reddit, and the fairly new Threads.

ALSO READ: Netflix Runs Into a Conservative Buzzsaw After It Pushes Transgenderism on Children

Another explanation offered up is social contagion. A 2023 study showed that over half of teenage girls who identified as transgender had friends who also identified as transgender. The study also showed that both boys and girls who claimed to be transgender had friends who claimed to be transgender. But maybe the simplest example is this: like saddle shoes, miniskirts, mood rings, and Rubik's Cubes, identifying as transgender has been no more than a fad. A weird fad, but a fad nonetheless.

A 2024 Dutch survey showed that of 2,772 adolescents who were tracked into their early adult years, 11 percent said they felt "gender non-contentedness" at age 11. By ages 24-26, that number fell to just four percent.

Fitting in and being cool are important to young people, and being trans is seemingly no longer cool, and young people are moving on. Here's to the next cool thing being, at the very least, far less physically invasive.

As with all fickle fads and superficial trends, trans identity has moved into the cringey last season zone. All the more reason not to sign off on sterilizing and mutilating your children on the winds of a social contagion. https://t.co/tPC5MN2iTb
— State Spirit (@statespirit) October 14, 2025

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