Less than half of America’s youth are straight, new survey finds
A new survey of Americans aged 13-20 has found that only 48% of them identify as “exclusively heterosexual”.
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.
The survey found that 65% of that group said they were only straight.
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.
According to the report’s author, J Walter Thompson Innovation Group, this meant that they were indicating they were bisexual to some degree.
Less than a quarter of millennials identified in the same way.
In regards to gender identity, 56% of the Gen Z replies said they knew someone who used neutral pronouns such as “they” or “them”.
Only a little over two fifths of 23 to 34-year-olds could claim the same.
When asked the question, “do you strongly agree that gender did not define a person as much as it used to?”, Over a third of Gen Zers said yes. This figure was only 23% among people aged 28 and over.
Possibly the biggest difference between the two groups was when it came to binary recognition.
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.
Although the survey only polled a small number from across the country, Shepherd Laughlin from the J Walter Thompson Group was confident the results reflected a national trend.
“We’re even more confident about this for this particular survey because we see clear patterns across the different questions that show that Gen Z has a more complex and less binary approach to gender than millennials,” he said.
The survey follows a similar one released in January that revealed woman are more likely to say they are bisexual than men.
