Nearly half of Americans believe young people are influenced by pop culture to identify as LGBTQ: poll
Nearly half of Americans believe young people are being influenced by pop culture to identify as LGBTQ — even if they aren’t, a new poll shows.
Forty-eight percent of those polled said those aged 18 to 29 years were being spurred to adopt a “LGBTQ+ identity” due to current popular trends, according to the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the LA Times survey published Thursday.
Still, a large portion (66%) said Americans under 30 were more likely to “openly identify” as gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer or transgender because it’s more accepted by today’s society.
More than half of those polled (57%) agreed that social stigmas had prevented older generations to come out — with many opting to keep their LGBTQ+ identity secret instead.
When asked about transgender and nonbinary people specifically and why “some people feel their gender does not match the sex they’re assigned at birth,” more than half (53%) said they are either “influenced by society” or it is a “lifestyle choice” — compared to 46% who said they are “born that way.”
In addition, 40% of respondents believe the increased “political and media attention” on transgender and nonbinary Americans has been a “bad thing for society,” compared to 16% who said it has had a positive impact on society. Forty-two percent said the increased attention has been neither good nor bad for society.
Elsewhere in the poll, 72% said they have friends, relatives or co-workers who have personally told them they are gay or lesbian.
Thirty-seven percent acknowledged they knew someone who they “seriously suspect” is queer, but the person hadn’t confided in them about their identity, according to the survey.
In addition, 27% of those polled said a friend or relative had come out to them as transgender or non-binary, while only 12% said they suspected a loved one identified as the opposite sex or none at all.
Meanwhile, the poll also found that more than a third of Americans (77%) believed elected officials were “mostly using debates over transgender and nonbinary people to distract attention from more pressing priorities.”
Only 21% agreed that issues affecting trans people were an “important priority” for elected officials, the poll shows.
Dan Malato, a senior research director at the University of Chicago-affiliated NORC Center, said the poll replicated multiple questions from a 1985 survey conducted by the LA Times in a bid to better understand how attitudes towards gender has changed in the last four decades.
“The 1985 survey data were an invaluable benchmark for measuring how public opinion towards the gay
and lesbian community has shifted over the last 40 years,” Malato said.
“By also asking new questions about other LGBTQ+ groups, like bisexual, nonbinary, and transgender people, the data are even more powerful in understanding perceptions toward these communities today.”
The survey, which was funded by The California Endowment and conducted by the University of Chicago-affiliated NORC Center, was conducted among 1,624 Americans between January 18 to 26.
The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus-or-minus 3.8 percentage points.
