Peer Pressure and Prior Psychiatric Illness Linked to Gender Issues in Teens

A new study that has drawn criticism from transgender activists finds most teens “come out” as transgender after belonging to a peer group in which multiple friends identify as trans.

Additionally, the study shows most young people announcing they are transgendered have already been identified with at least one mental health disorder.

In the study –  published at PLoS ONE –  that focused on teens who are predominantly female, Lisa Littman, an assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown University, found 87 percent of the young people were reported by their parents to have “come out” as trans after increased time spent on social media and the Internet and after “cluster outbreaks” of gender dysphoria among their groups of friends. Most of the teens who ultimately identified as transgender also showed increased popularity with peer groups afterward.

Of the teens whose parents participated in the study, 62.5% had been diagnosed with at least one mental health disorder prior to the onset of their gender dysphoria. In 36.8% of the teens’ friendship groups, the majority of the members “came out” as transgendered. Amazon.com Gift Card i... Buy New $25.00 (as of 06:10 UTC - Details)

“The most likely outcomes were that AYA [adolescent and young adult children] mental well-being and parent-child relationships became worse since AYAs ‘came out,’” reported Littman, adding:

AYAs expressed a range of behaviors that included: expressing distrust of non-transgender people (22.7%); stopping spending time with non-transgender friends (25.0%); trying to isolate themselves from their families (49.4%), and only trusting information about gender dysphoria from transgender sources (46.6%).

Littman set out to learn more about why the number of adolescent girls identifying as transgender at Britain’s Gender Identity Development Service had increased from 41 percent in 2009 to 69 percent in 2017.

The researcher said she had observed teens without a history of gender dysphoria – a clinical term describing psychological discomfort caused by a sense one’s gender is incompatible with one’s biological sex – were “coming out” as transgender “after a period of immersing themselves in niche websites after similar announcements from friends.” Amazon.com Gift Card i... Buy New $10.00 (as of 08:25 UTC - Details)

Littman refers to this phenomenon as “rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD)”:

The onset of gender dysphoria seemed to occur in the context of belonging to a peer group where one, multiple, or even all of the friends have become gender dysphoric and transgender-identified during the same timeframe. Parents also report that their children exhibited an increase in social media/internet use prior to disclosure of a transgender identity.

For her study, Littman recruited 256 anonymous parents of children – who suddenly became gender dysphoric in adolescence – to participate in an online, 90-question survey.

Parental responses showed 87 percent of the teens announced they were transgender after increased time on social media and/or after “cluster outbreaks” of gender dysphoria in their groups of friends. Responses indicated most children who “came out” as transgender became increasingly popular as a result of their announcement.

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