Advances with respect to both technology and LGBTQ rights have been massive in the 21^st century. Arguably, more ground has been covered in twenty-one years than in the prior twenty centuries combined. Let’s do a quick recap.

As to LGBTQ rights, at the turn of the 21^st century not a single country in the entire world had legalized same-sex marriage. Nor had a single U.S. state. A mere twelve states banned sexual orientation discrimination in private employment. Not a single state banned gender identity discrimination in private employment. Criminalization of gay and lesbian sex was still constitutional. Approximately 54% of Americans thought “sexual relations between two adults of the same sex” (let alone marriage) were “always wrong.” Many others thought it was “almost always” or “sometimes” wrong. And a host of LGTBQ-related words (e.g., cisgender, genderfluid, genderqueer) were years and years away from being added to the dictionaries.

As to technology, the apocalyptical Y2K bug was threatening to shut down our dial-up internet and other centers of now outdated technology. We lacked camera phones, USB flash drives, Bluetooth, social media, YouTube, bitcoin, voice assistants, 3D printing, iPhones, and a myriad of other things. The first-ever mass-produced electric vehicle (the Honda Insight) had just been released. And your average American sent a whopping thirty-five text messages per month, most likely on a Nokia 3210. Yes, per month.

Notably, the advancement of technology, unlike that of LGBTQ rights, has not been very politically polarizing—big tech regulation efforts notwithstanding. Both, however, have had a disproportionate impact on teenage girls.

With respect to technology, this assertion is pretty noncontroversial. The political left, right, and center have actually come together on this issue, or at least reached similar conclusions. For example, the NYT, WSJ, WaPo, and Breitbart all recently published articles condemning the effects of Instagram on teenage girls. Needless to say, rarely do these four news outlets collectively agree on anything.

Texting, likewise, is particularly problematic for teenage girls. Studies show that teenage girls generally text more than boys; are more prone to compulsive texting; and, apparently unlike boys, experience a “negative relation between compulsive texting and academic functioning.”

The problems appear to go beyond Instagram and texting to the smartphone at large. In a 2020 article by Etactics titled “40+ Frightening Social Media and Mental Health Statistics,” author Maria Clark writes:

Since the release of smartphones, mental health concerns have increased in children and young adults. The rate of adolescents reporting symptoms of major depression in a given year increased by 52% from 2005 to 2017. From 2009 to 2017, it grew by 63% in adults ages 18 to 25.
. . . .
Between 2012 and 2015, depression in boys increased by 21% and in girls by 50%.
. . . .
Child suicide rates increased by up to 150%, and self-harm by girls ages 10 to 14 nearly tripled. These patterns point to social media.

The tech giant execs know this better than anyone. As NYT contributor Lindsay Crouse states in the closing paragraph of her recent article, “For Teenage Girls, Instagram Is a Cesspool, “more telling than what Silicon Valley parents say [about tech] is what they do. Many of them have long known that technology can be harmful: That’s why they’ve often banned their own children from using it.”

In light of the above, it is not hard to understand why Americans from both sides of the political aisle share common ground on this subject.

With respect to the advancement of LGBTQ rights, recognizing its disproportionate impact on teenage girls should be noncontroversial, too—at least if construed matter-of-factly. As recently reported by WebMD in its article titled “Big Rise in U.S. Teens Identifying as Gay, Bisexual,” between 2015 and 2019 the percentage of fifteen to seventeen-year-old boys identifying as non-heterosexual jumped by 26% from 4.5% to 5.7%, while the number of girls identifying as non-heterosexual jumped by 46% from 12.2% to 17.8%. According to another study, 23% of black women ages eighteen to thirty-four now identify as bisexual. By contrast, as of 2010, one in sixty-five of all women identified as bisexual, i.e. 1.5%.

The statistics are even more glaring as it relates specifically to transgenderism. According to the most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which was published in 2013, less than one in 10,000 people experienced gender dysphoria at that time. More specifically, it occurred in .005-.014% of males and an .002-.003% of females (i.e., approximately one in every 30,000-50,000 females). In other words, as of 2013, males accounted for anywhere between 62-82% of all cases of gender dysphoria. Most cases involved young boys; gender dysphoria in adolescent females was extremely rare.

Since then, “adolescent gender dysphoria has surged across the west. In the United States, the prevalence has increased by over 1,000 percent.” Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (2021). In fact, per a 2017 CDC study, 2% of high school students now identify as transgender. A 2018 study conducted by then Brown University professor Lisa Littman, MD, MPH, FACOG found that 80% of the adolescents with gender dysphoria she studied were females, with the mean age being 16.4. For the vast majority of these girls, there was not a single indicator of gender dysphoria in their childhood. Rather, the condition “seemed to occur in the context of belonging to a peer group.” The results of her study led Dr. Littman to coin the term “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” and to describe it as mostly a “social contagion.” This phenomenon is not limited to the U.S. “In Britain, the increase [in adolescent gender dysphoria] is 4,000 percent, and the three-quarters of those referred for gender treatment are girls.” (Shrier).

We are not simply referring to social transitioning either. Medical and surgical transitioning has increased by leaps and bounds, too. From 2016 to 2017 alone, there was a 400% rise in transgender surgeries in the U.S., with women accounting for seven in ten. (Shier, citing to the 2017 Plastic Surgery Statistics Report). From 2008 to 2018, the UK reported a 4,400% increase in transgender surgeries among teenage girls. At the time Shrier was writing her book in 2019 or 2020, GoFundMe was hosting “over thirty thousand fundraisers to enable young women to remove their healthy breasts.” (Shrier). Apparently, as of this moment, there are 40,330 (including both sexes).

Considering the above, we must ask whether the greatly increased prevalence of transgenderism among teenage girls is negatively impacting them, or is it merely impacting them neutrally or for the better? Obviously, this is a very polarizing question in our culture. But no one can reasonably deny that it is negatively impacting teenage girls in this sense: gender dysphoria by its very nature is distress, often of an extreme intensity. (See, for example, the Child Mind Institute’s Quick Guide to Gender Dysphoria, stating that “[t]he key sign of gender dysphoria is that the child feels extreme emotional distress because of their gender identity.”) Thus, if gender dysphoria is increasing exponentially among teenage girls, they are being negatively impacted by it in the sense that they are experiencing more distress. The counterarguments would be, “Well, it is the culture’s fault for not being more affirming” and/or the distress is a necessary stepping stone to true happiness that occurs once the transition is settled into or completed.

The primary counterargument, however, may lie in suicide rates. That is, many mental health professionals and educators tell parents that if they do not accept and affirm their child’s own sense of gender, their child will be more likely to commit suicide: “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son?” they rhetorically ask.

Lamentably, it is indisputable that transgender people (and particularly transgender youth) have very high rates of suicidal ideation. According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (USTS), “the largest survey of transgender people in the U.S. to date,” 82% of transgender people have seriously considered suicide in their lifetimes, 48% have done so in the last year, and 40% have attempted suicide at some point in their lives. By contrast, only 4.6% of the general population has attempted suicide at some point in their lives. The disparity is incredibly sad. The pain is infinitely real.

The statistics are even more disturbing for teenage girls who identify as transgender. As reported by the Human Rights Campaign, 2018 study that “more than half of transgender male teens [i.e., biological girls] . . . attempt[ed] suicide in their lifetime,” with approximately 70% experiencing suicidal ideation in the last year.

As suggested above, proponents of transgender ideology would blame these statistics on societal stigma, discrimination, and deprivation of human rights. But these things have decreased significantly in recent years. For example, our executive branch, mainstream media, and U.S. Supreme Court (or at least six of its justices), among other institutions, arguably stand in solidarity with the transgender community.

Moreover, according to the Transgender Law Center’s Equality Map, “45% of the LGBTQ population lives in states with high policy tallies,” i.e., “laws and policies within the state that help drive equality for LGBTQ people.” Only “11% of the LGBTQ population lives in states with negative overall policy tallies.” Yet, despite these things, the transgender community’s mental health statistics do not appear to be getting better and may in fact be getting worse. (See the Human Rights Campaign’s above-linked article stating that the mental health statistics are “harrowing” and “alarming”).

From my perspective, these statistics beg the question as to whether there is a major cultural gaslighting underway. What I mean by that is this. On the one hand, we are increasingly promoting transgenderism in K-12 public education, among other places—including the purported distinctions between gender identity, gender expression, sex assigned at birth, physical attraction, and emotional attraction as represented by the Gender Unicorn or the Genderbread Person. As a result, 15.1% of Gen Z and 9.1% of Millennials now identify as LGBTQ, as compared to 3.8% of Gen X and 2% of Baby Boomers.

Study after study, however, shows that those who identify as transgender experience significantly worse mental health than the general population (the same goes for the rest of the LGBTQ community, albeit to a lesser degree). But, as demonstrated above, we are promoting, celebrating, and driving people to entertain transgenderism. Thereafter, if the gender-confused or gender-dysphoric person expresses reservation or ambivalence, we tell them that their mental health will worsen unless they fully embrace a transgender identity and “accept themselves.”

However, “[w]hen you tell a group of highly suggestible adolescent[s] that if they don’t [do] a certain thing, they’re going to feel suicidal, that’s suggestion, and then you’re actually spreading suicide contagion.” (Lisa Marchiano, Psychotherapist, Certified Jungian Analyst). Fearing for their own lives (at least in some instances), the gender-confused or gender-dysphoric person will then enter the trans-community only to subsequently become one of the 40-50%+ that experiences suicidal ideation. I am not suggesting that this is the order of events for all transgender people who experience suicidal ideation, but it is the order for some, perhaps many. Hence, what appears to be gaslighting.

We now live in a country where “[j]ust 45% of Gen Zers report their mental health is very good or excellent” (significantly lower than any other generation). Moreover, 70% of teens say anxiety and depression are a “major problem” among their peers according to a 2019 Pew Research Center study. Obviously, there are other factors at play, but I believe it is unreasonable to deny that tech and trans-activism are two contributing factors—perhaps the two foremost.

I can’t help but think to C.S. Lewis’s comments on progress in his book “The Case for Christianity.” He writes:

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

For the thousands of trans teens who have detransitioned or want to, I imagine this quote would resonate with them greatly.

In closing, as compassionately stated by Christian author Sam Alberry, who has been attracted to men since he was an adolescent, Christianity can “uniquely account for how it is that someone could end up feeling so un-at-home in their own body.” (He explains why in the short video below). For this reason, Alberry notes, Christians should be “the most compassionate and understanding people there are when it comes to this issue.” He then identifies how Christianity offers a unique hope. For more, watch his two minute, and forty-five second below.