A new wave of research is shaking up what many believed was a growing trend among young people.
After several years of increasing numbers of Gen Z identifying as nonbinary, new data now shows that the figures are sharply declining — a surprising shift in gender identity patterns across U.S. colleges.
Major Drop in Nonbinary Identification Across U.S. Campuses
According to new research analyzed by Eric Kaufmann, a politics professor based in Vancouver, the number of students identifying as neither male nor female has dropped significantly since 2023.
Kaufmann examined large-scale data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) as well as self-reported figures from several universities.
The FIRE survey, which polled more than 60,000 college students across the United States, revealed that only 3.6 percent now identify as nonbinary.
That’s a steep decline from 5.2 percent in 2024, and an even greater fall from the 6.8 percent recorded in both 2022 and 2023 — meaning the number has more than halved in just two years.
Elite Schools Reflect the Same Downward Trend
It’s not just public universities seeing this change. Kaufmann found that private and elite schools are showing the same pattern.
For instance, Andover Phillips Academy in suburban Boston reported that 9.2 percent of its students identified as nonbinary in 2023 — but this year, the number dropped to just three percent.
At Brown University, a similar story emerged. In 2022 and 2023, around five percent of students said they were nonbinary, yet by 2025, that figure had fallen to 2.6 percent.
The consistency of this decline across multiple campuses suggests a widespread cultural shift rather than an isolated pattern.
What Might Be Behind the Change
While the exact reasons for this decline aren’t entirely clear, Professor Kaufmann offered an interesting perspective.
He noted that when trans and queer identities were at their cultural peak, freshmen were more likely than seniors to identify as gender nonconforming. Now, that trend has flipped.
In his analysis for UnHerd, he wrote:
“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.”
Kaufmann suggested that this could be a sign that “fashions are changing,” even though students’ political views have remained largely the same.
Conservative Voices Respond to the Data
The findings didn’t go unnoticed. Moms for Liberty, a conservative parents’ group, shared the study online, calling it evidence that being transgender or nonbinary is “no longer trendy.”
Their post quickly gained traction across social media, fueling debate about whether social influence — rather than personal exploration — drove the earlier rise in nonbinary identification.
A Turning Point in National Gender Trends
This shift represents a major moment in the broader discussion of gender identity in the United States.
Just a few years ago, U.S. Census data from 2021 and 2022 showed that one in 18 young adults identified as something other than male or female — a figure that, combined with those identifying as transgender, represented about two million Americans aged 18 to 26.
Psychology professor Jean M. Twenge wrote for TIME in 2023 that this number was roughly equal to the entire population of Phoenix, the country’s fifth-largest city.
Long-Term Studies Suggest Many Young People Grow More Comfortable With Their Gender
Adding context to this shift, a landmark 15-year study conducted by researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands followed over 2,700 children from age 11 into their mid-twenties.
The team asked participants every few years about how they felt regarding their gender.
At the beginning, around 11 percent said they felt some level of “gender non-contentedness.”
But by age 25, that number had dropped to just four percent — showing that most people eventually become more settled in their gender identity.
Researchers Emphasize That Doubt Is Normal
The Dutch researchers published their findings in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, concluding that 78 percent of participants felt the same about their gender throughout the study.
About 19 percent became more comfortable over time, while only 2 percent grew less so.
They wrote that their findings might help young people understand that it’s perfectly normal to question one’s identity in adolescence — and that most eventually find peace with who they are.
What This Means Going Forward
While the conversation around gender identity continues to evolve, these new figures suggest that social trends, peer influence, and cultural factors may play a larger role than previously thought.
Whether the current decline continues or levels off remains to be seen — but one thing is clear: for Gen Z, the way young people understand and express identity is entering a new, more reflective phase.