Nearly one in 20 American high schoolers are trans or confused about their gender, according to a first-of-its-kind official report.
The CDC survey, which interviewed 20,000 children aged 14 to 18 years, found that 3.3 percent of children said they identified as transgender while a further 2.2 percent said they were unsure about their gender.
The report, based on data from 2023, also found much higher rates of feelings of sadness and bullying among transgender or gender-questioning teens than boys or girls.
The finding is much higher than the previous figure which estimated 1.4 percent of teenagers in the US were transgender.
Nearly one in 20 American high schoolers are trans or confused about their gender (stock image)
The CDC released this graphic alongside their report
Similar data in the UK suggests transgender prevalence is highest in 16 to 17-year-olds, where around one in 600 people identified as such in 2018.
The new estimates were based on the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, which surveys a representative sample of high schoolers across the country every two years.
The 2023 survey was the first to ask teenagers whether they identified as transgender.
Kathleen Ethier, the director of the CDC’s adolescent and school health division, described the results of the survey as ‘heartbreaking’.
‘We have five percent of young people in the country who, because of the way they identify around their gender, are stigmatized, bullied, made to feel unsafe, feel disconnected at school and consequently have poorer mental health and higher risk for suicide than their cisgender peers.’ she said.
Results also showed that about 70 percent of transgender students reported feelings of persistent sadness or hopelessness, compared to 50 percent of girls and 26 percent of boys.
And only 37 percent of transgender students said they were likely to feel close to others at school, versus 62 percent of boys and half of girls.
The above shows transgender children or those questioning their gender identity were more likely to experience harms than others
The children were also asked about suicides, with one in four transgender children saying they had attempted suicides in the past year, compared to 11 percent of girls and five percent of boys.
Ten percent of transgender children said they had received medical treatment from a doctor or nurse for a suicide attempt in the past year, compared to 2.6 percent for girls and one percent for boys.
The survey came at a time of heightened political tension around the topic, and a slew of bans on procedures on minors in Republican states.
More than 25 states have already placed bans on some procedures for minors, while others have made it emphatically clear that the procedures will never be banned for those under 18 years old.
A 2022 report by the Williams Institute in Los Angeles estimated 1.4 percent of children were trans on the basis of data collected from 15 states in 2017 and 2019.
Researchers at the institute said the new figures appeared to align with trends recorded at their own institute, with more young people identifying as transgender over time.
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