More young people than ever now identify as transgender, a new study from UCLA shows. The study—which analyzed government health surveys from 2017 to 2020—revealed that 1.4 percent of children 13 to 17 and 1.3 percent of those 18 to 24 identify as transgender, while only 0.5 percent of all adults do. Also, it estimated that 43 percent of the 1.6 million people in the U.S. who identify as transgender are young adults or teenagers. Dr. Angela Goepferd, medical director of the Gender Health Program at Children’s Hospital Minnesota, told The New York Times that teens may feel more open to explore their identities amid changing attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community. “We as a culture just need to lean into the fact that there is gender diversity among us,” Geopferd said. “And that it doesn’t mean that we need to treat it medically in all cases, but it does mean that we as a society need to make space for that.”
