What I'd like to know more about and to understand is why there's been this sudden increase. I know some of it is awareness and people being open about it when they wouldn't have been able to do that in the past.
But there seems to be a massive increase in the number of trans individuals. So what's behind that?
I even wondered about things like micro-plastics and environmental factors at one point.
- Historical estimates for recent years (e.g., Flores et al. 2016/2017) place U.S. adult transgender prevalence around 0.3–0.6%, and retrospective analyses of birth cohorts suggest substantially lower recorded/identified prevalence in earlier decades.
Latest best estimate (2025 data): about 1.0% of people aged 13+ identify as transgender (≈2.8 million); among adults 18+, about 0.8%.
That's approx doubled. 0.45% to 0.9%. In 10 years.
I don't think I'd even heard of trans until after I left HS.
Now almost everyone knows someone who is trans.
Why the increase? Just acceptance/awareness/being able to be open? Or what?
It's a really serious issue as it massively affects MH, affects someone's quality of life and health, costs a huge amount, causes a huge amount of anguish and problems for some people, and can change the course of their life totally. So what's going on?
