They’re here, they’re weird, no big deal.
Nearly six in ten young people under 30 no longer see themselves as boring old heterosexuals, a new survey shows.
Dating app Feeld surveyed more than 3,000 users from 71 countries for the study.
Dr. Justin Lehmiller, a social psychologist at Indiana University who led the study, said the new generation is “willing to explore more flexible lifestyles.”
While the risqué social tool may be skewed towards those interested in “alternative relationship models,” the findings appear to mirror other research showing that more young people are thinking outside the box on sex.
For example, the Daily Mail reports that a 2023 Gallup poll found that 22.3% of Generation Z Americans identify as LGBTQIA+, double the number from seven years ago.
Feeld users can choose from 19 different options, ranging from bisexual to semi-romantic, the latter of which the app categorizes as “needing to have a strong emotional or sexual connection with a partner before feeling a romantic connection with them.”
“What’s also striking is that the Feeld community seems to be more open to exploring, defining and redefining their authentic selves than the national average,” Dr. Lehmiller said.
The New York Times previously reported that Feeld usage surged 65% between 2021 and 2022, but the company does not disclose membership numbers.
Meanwhile, the 2023 Gallup survey results show that older generations are not as liberal.
Only 9.8% of millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) say they are not heterosexual.
For Generation X, that number shrinks to 4.5%, and for baby boomers, it’s just 2.3%.
“Each younger generation is twice as likely to identify as LGBTQ+ as the previous generation,” the pollster reported at the time.
However, older people may have the last laugh — early reports from the Feeld study indicate that Gen Xers and Millennials are more sexually active, doing the horizontal mambo five times a month, while Gen Zers are less active, doing it only three times a month.