High school students were almost twice as likely to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or questioning in 2017 as they were in 2009. Among those students, the rate of suicide attempts declined—but still remains high.
14.3%
The percentage of high school students who identified as sexual minorities in 2017, compared with 7.3% in 2009. The data are from the only six states that collected sexual orientation data on high school students throughout that time frame—Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, North Dakota and Rhode Island—resulting in information on 110,243 adolescents.
2.8%
The percentage of teens who identified as gay or lesbian in 2017, compared with 1.4% in 2009. More teens also identified as bisexual (7.2% in 2017 versus 3.9% in 2009) and being unsure of their sexual orientation (4.3% in 2017 versus 2.0% in 2009). Meanwhile, teen girls in 2017 were more than twice as likely to identify as sexual minorities as teen boys—19.6% compared with 8.9%.
20.1%
The percentage of sexual minority teens who reported attempting suicide in 2017, compared with 26.7% in 2009. Suicide attempts among heterosexual teens remained the same over that time, at 6%. In other words, sexual minority students were 3.8 times more likely to report attempting suicide in 2017 than were heterosexual teens, compared with 5.2 times more in 2009.
