Study: 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.

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

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.

Transgender activists have condemned the study, leading Brown University to censor it after it “heard from Brown community members expressing concerns that the conclusions of the study could be used to discredit efforts to support transgender youth and invalidate the perspectives of members of the transgender community.”

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