Trans ‘Social Contagion’ Narrative Debunked by New Study

The “social contagion” narrative around trans and gender-nonconforming people has been officially debunked by a new study released by the medical journal Pediatrics. Anti-trans activists often repeat the same claim, that those assigned female at birth (AFAB) are coming out as trans at a disturbingly rapid rate in comparison to past years. Their reasoning for this is defined as “social contagion,” which is the right-wing belief that media and peer pressure are convincing young children, especially those assigned female at birth, to transition to fit in with their peers.

This argument also comes along with the use of the term “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” which implies that trans people are adopting their new identities far too quickly and without much forethought.

According to this study, however, there was little to no increase in the number of trans/nonbinary AFAB people between the years of 2017 and 2019. Drawing from the CDC’s annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the researchers found that in a 2017 sample of 12-18-year-olds from 16 different states, 2.4% of the 91,937 surveyed adolescents self-identified as trans. In 2019, only 1.6% of the 105,437 surveyed adolescents self-identified the same way.

The study’s senior author Dr. Alex S. Keuroghlian, director of the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center at the Fenway Institute and the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Gender Identity Program, completely denounces the concept of social contagion, stating that its invalidity further proves the fact that it “should not be used to argue against the provision of gender-affirming medical care for adolescents.”

In many spaces, transgender youth are denied medical care on the basis of the medical professional subscribing to a different set of ideals that are supported by baseless claims of “social contagion” amidst other things. The promotion of this way of thinking has contributed to a massive spike in suicide rates among trans youth, with some of the largest medical entities in the nation stating that gender-affirming care and acceptance directly correlates to their mental wellbeing.