Less than half of America’s youth are straight, new survey finds
Yet another study confirms the trend: Younger people are less and less likely to think of themselves as exclusively heterosexual or – for that matter – belonging to one of the poles of the gender binary only.
The survey, of Americans aged 13-20 (Generation Z), has found that only 48% of them identify as “exclusively heterosexual”.
It turns out sexual orientation and gender identity are more like continuums, after all. Or maybe something even more complex.
In comparison with millennials aged 21 to 34, the younger generation – known as Gen Z – were found to be more open-minded and permissive than the group just a few years older…
Using a scale of zero to six, where zero represented “exclusively heterosexual” and six “exclusively homosexual”, over a third of Gen Z respondents picked a number other than zero or six.
The youngest ones are also strongly transpositive:
Over 70% of 13 to 20-year-olds strongly agreed that public spaces should be required to provide gender neutral bathrooms, which compared to only a little over half of millennials.
In another article about the study, Teens These Days Are Queer AF, Vice adds this about gender:
Fifty-six percent of 13-to-20-year-olds said that they knew someone who went by gender neutral pronouns such as “they,” “them,” or “ze,” compared to 43 percent of people aged 28 to 34 years old. Over a third of Gen Z respondents also strongly agreed that gender did not define a person as much as it used to. This figure dropped to 23 percent among millennials who were 28 and up.
Last year another study found that 43% of Brits aged 18 to 24 years old were bisexual.
That study clearly documented that the younger you get, the less likely you are to consider yourself purely heterosexual.
Illustration photo from Jupiterimages.
