A UConn survey last year of 17,000 LGBTQ+ teens from around the country found that while nearly 83% of respondents had come out to at least one immediate family member, an overwhelming majority hadn\u2019t disclosed their sexual orientation to their religious community, athletic coaches, or doctors.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a finding that researcher Ryan J. Watson, an associate professor in human development and family sciences<\/a>, says is alarming because teens expressed fear that such a disclosure could affect their opportunities in spiritual, athletic, and health care situations.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat does give me hope, though, is there were many LGBTQ+ teens who reported they are optimistic about their futures. Given current legislation, it\u2019s particularly tough for these teens right now, but they\u2019re hopeful that adulthood will bring better things,\u201d Watson says. \u201cWhile LGBTQ+ teens are still reporting unacceptably high levels of bullying and poor mental health experiences, many also reported that they foresee themselves having a happy future as an LGBTQ+ person.\u201d<\/p>\n The 2022 survey is a follow up<\/a> to one done in 2017 in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign<\/a>, which also helped to analyze last year\u2019s data and published the results in its 2023 LGBTQ+ Youth Report<\/a>.<\/p>\n Watson says that while more than 45 peer-reviewed academic papers came of the data from five years ago, he expects the most recent survey to produce as many as 50 on many facets of the LGBTQ+ teen experience, from how the internet can facilitate healthy development to the importance of using proper pronouns in schools and at home.<\/p>\n Also, HRC is planning to publish a handful of reports on specific topics such as the school-to-prison pipeline among LGBTQ+ youth in schools.<\/p>\n What\u2019s also important about the 2022 survey, Watson says, is that about 3,000 of the teens provided their contact information to allow UConn researchers to contact them again to follow their development through the years. It won\u2019t be the first such study of LGBTQ+ teens, but it will be one of the few.<\/p>\n The 2017 survey was conducted during the Trump administration, while the 2022 survey was done during the Biden administration, Watson notes. Even though different political parties headed government at each time, there are many more legislative attacks now against transgender individuals, in particular.<\/p>\n \u201cSome people might think things are \u2018getting better\u2019 for LGBTQ+ youth right now because of a more liberal government, however in some ways it\u2019s not. We\u2019re seeing some negative experiences that are heightened or even worse than they were before,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Results from the two surveys can\u2019t be directly compared, in part because they included many different questions \u2013 in 2022 some new questions included those about chest binding and internet safety, for instance. Also, researchers in 2022 had to navigate the proliferation of scammers attempting to fraudulently submit responses to collect incentives.<\/p>\n Watson says advertising for the 2017 survey was done on social media platforms like X, formerly known as Twitter, and in 2022, teens had gravitated toward other platforms such as Discord and Tiktok, so researchers needed to adjust their means of recruitment.<\/p>\n The goal was to collect 17,000 survey responses from LGBTQ+ teens between 13 and 18 years old and that happened, Watson notes, making the sampling a success. In compiling the data, researchers excluded about 5,000 responses from full data analyses for numerous reasons, including being incomplete, leaving about 12,000 as part of the survey results.<\/p>\n Among some of the study\u2019s findings are:<\/p>\n \u2022 The average age LGBQ+ youth realized they were something other than heterosexual was about 11 years old; the average age transgender and gender-expansive youth realized they were something other than cisgender was 12 1\/2 years old.<\/p>\n \u2022 Only 13.8% of LGBTQ+ youth have been taught about LGBTQ+ history and only 19.6% have access to LGBTQ+ inclusive sex education. 72.8% attend schools that have a gay-straight alliance or similar club.<\/p>\n \u2022 22.5% of LGBTQ+ youth play sports, including 17.6% in schools. However, 64.8% are involved in at least one extracurricular activity.<\/p>\n \u2022 About 46% of transgender and gender-expansive youth can use a school bathroom that matches their gender identity. And, at school, about 46% feel unsafe in at least one educational setting, most often locker rooms and bathrooms.<\/p>\n \u2022 Almost 57% report being harassed at least once in the last 30 days.<\/p>\n \u2022 About 55% were screened positive for depression; 63.5% were positive for anxiety.<\/p>\n \u2022 90.3% are proud to be part of the LGBTQ+ community, but 23% wish they were not LGBTQ+.<\/p>\n \u201cAll teens experience general stress, such as asking someone out to prom or studying for a hard exam, and many teens might say they are struggling in any current moment,\u201d Watson says. \u201cBut for the teens in our survey, there are specific stressors reported that are unique to their sexual and gender identities. Some of them are victimized and harassed or excluded for being LGBTQ+, and then there\u2019s internalized homophobia or concealment out of fear for being rejected. It\u2019s those unique stressors specific to sexual and gender identity that scientists posit are responsible for some of the negative outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n However, today\u2019s LGBTQ+ teens are more aware than in previous generations about their rights, whether given to them or taken away, Watson says. They pay attention to the news and know, for example, that in some states their parents can be jailed just for getting them identity-affirming health care.<\/p>\n Those regional or state-to-state differences are things that will be looked at using the data from 2022, which collected teens\u2019 ZIP codes. Researchers will be able to map state laws and local ordinances alongside teen responses to see how anti-LGBTQ+ initiatives affect young people in that area.<\/p>\n Much like in 2017, the recent survey found that teens who live in states that are more conservative around LGBTQ+ issues report worse outcomes, Watson says, but those in places like the Northeast and West report better experiences.<\/p>\n \u201cDespite the past two decades of unparalleled acceptance of gay marriage, the repeal of \u2018don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell,\u2019 and advances in protecting LGBTQ+ rights, over the last couple of years that has been eroded,\u201d Watson says. \u201cWe\u2019re still seeing extreme health disparities among LGBTQ+ young people. Data show LGBTQ+ youth are at much higher odds for suicide, depression, and anxiety. We know kids are really struggling despite having resources and parents who are accepting. Structural issues remain.\u201d<\/p>\n He continues, \u201cThis data allows us to better understand which groups \u2013 LGBTQ+ teens of color, of different socioeconomic statuses, in different regions of the United States \u2013 are most at risk and what interventions or supports can help. These are questions we\u2019re able to answer when we have big data of diverse types. It\u2019s important to use this data to make some kind of policy or community change.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Funding for the 2022 survey came from a grant from the National Institutes of Health. The first paper detailing its methodologies, \u201cExamining Mental Health and Bullying Concerns at the Intersection of Sexuality, Gender, Race, and Ethnicity Among a National Sample of Sexual and Gender Diverse Youth,\u201d<\/a> was published this month in LGBT Health. Find the HRC\u2019s 2023 LGBTQ+ Youth Report here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ‘Despite the past two decades of unparalleled acceptance of gay marriage, the repeal of \u2018don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell,\u2019 and advances in protecting LGBTQ+ rights, over the last couple of years that has been eroded’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":204411,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2705,2226,2460,2269,2076,2235,2306],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-204334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sexual-violence-research","category-clas","category-faculty","category-inchip","category-research","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-voices"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 18:07:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204334"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204466,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204334\/revisions\/204466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/204411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204334"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=204334"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=204334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}