Pew Research reports that, in 2024, 65 percent of American adults believed that ‘gender’ is determined by sex, whereas 69 percent of teenagers believed the same, a reversal of previous trends.
(LifeSiteNews) -- New data shows that U.S. teenagers are now more likely than adults to say that a person’s "gender" is determined by his or her sex, marking a reversal of 2022 trends.
Pew Research found in 2024 that 65 percent of American adults believe that being a man or a woman is determined by sex, whereas 69 percent of teenagers believe the same. While Pew’s 2022 statistics do not indicate the views of teenagers specifically, they show that young adults ages 18-29 were much less likely than older cohorts to believe that gender is synonymous with sex.
In 2022, only 50 percent of adults ages 18-29 believed that being a man or a woman is determined by sex, whereas 60 percent of adults ages 30 to 49 believed this to be the case, and 66 percent of adults ages 50 to 64 did.
Among teenagers surveyed in 2024, 88 percent of those who lean Republican believed that gender is defined by sex, whereas only 50 percent of those who lean Democrat believed the same.
The shift toward traditional, commonsense views on sex and gender among youth could be due to their greater consumption of social media content. Another 2024 Pew Research study shows that the younger an American is, the more likely he or she is to turn to online influencers for news content. It is notable that significantly more news influencers are “right-leaning” than “left-leaning,” according to Pew: 27 percent versus 21 percent.
Pew stated that “overall, more news influencers explicitly present a politically right-leaning orientation than a left-leaning one in their account bios, posts, websites or media coverage.”
While the political parties have shifted leftward over the past few decades, today, one of the bare minimum requisites for being classified as conservative, generally, is holding the traditional and biological view that one’s "gender" is solely determined by sex.
Two prominent examples of influencers who hold to traditional views of sex despite being otherwise moderate or left-leaning are Joe Rogan, who hosts the number one podcast in the world, and X owner Elon Musk, who has the most followed account on X by a large margin.
