Anti-LGBTQ+ adults could be making kids more hateful. One crucial antidote could stop this.

2024 is a terrifying time to be queer in America.

Currently, the ACLU is tracking 52 bills impacting LGBTQ+ content and curriculum censorship, 58 bills relating to the forced outing of trans and gender-nonconforming kids, and 74 bills seeking to enact bans on youth receiving gender-affirming care. Only 9 states (and the District of Columbia) don’t currently have anti-LGBTQ+ bills being proposed – the other 41 have a whopping 484. They won’t all become law, but each one that does whittles away at the human rights the previous generations fought so dearly for. Looking at the 2024 ballot feels like staring down the barrel of a gun.

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Where are LGBTQ+ youth safe, especially when they’re considered too young to have autonomy, and the adults in their lives blame them for the violence they experience?

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I see all of this, and I think of Brianna Ghey, viciously murdered by two transphobic teens in the UK, and Nex Benedict, ruled to have died by suicide after a year of bullying that finally culminated in being attacked by teens in a bathroom at school. And it’s not just teens – O’Shae Sibley was murdered last year after having homophobic slurs thrown at him at a gas station. Two gay men just out for a walk were attacked in New York City last month. 

What do all these hate crimes have in common? The violence was committed by teenagers. 

There are many reasons why we’re seeing a rise in aggressive behavior from teenagers. While the health crisis of a worldwide pandemic destabilized us and social media continues to be a devastating cudgel when it comes to bullying, those are symptoms of a deeper, more difficult-to-address problem. The root of the issue is the devaluing of critical thinking, not just in schools but in our society at large. 

On any given day, I see a handful of assumptions, fueled by propaganda, come across my screen. I will see it in the form of an easy-to-share Facebook meme that makes a smug remark about what makes a “real” women. I will see it in the form of AI and deepfakes being shared as if they’re genuine photographs and in the form of “satirical news sites” posing as legitimate news. And it’s shared by people, often adults, who have never learned to ask questions about these claims, who don’t know how to look for citations and sources, and who believe that if something is presented as truth, it probably is. 

If these adults don’t know how to (or don’t care to) dissect and research silly and easily disproven claims, like “Nickelodeon is Latin for ‘I don’t care about God’”, or that Facebook bans posting the Lord’s Prayer, they’re certainly not going to bother when it’s something that confirms their established bigotries. Confirmation bias (where we’re more likely to believe something that bolsters what we already agree with) plays into this, as does the illusory truth effect (a lie repeated to the point of familiarity becomes more believable). And if these adults are parents, I would put money down that they’re passing these behaviors onto their kids, whether consciously or subconsciously. 

While Millennials and Gen Z saw headlines about how they were “more queer than ever”, anecdotes about Gen Alpha being more homophobic and transphobic makes me wonder what’s going on.

I keep coming back to a constant display of critical thinking being devalued by adults. Why wouldn’t the increase in “grooming” rhetoric being spewed wildly and without consequence in both the mainstream and social media at any LGBTQ+ person trickle down to the youth like some bitter bile?

If you’re hearing at home and in the news that “social contagion is turning kids trans”, why wouldn’t you potentially feel scared and threatened by that… even if it’s not true? And when the adults in your community regularly resort to violence – around mask-wearing, around who won the presidency, around drag queen story hours – why wouldn’t you see that as a way to grasp at control too?

We need to teach our teens how to think critically instead of parroting what they hear from the adults around them. We need to give them the tools to recognize what a logical fallacy is when they see it, to teach them how to spot a good reference versus a bad one online, how to analyze a claim. This knowledge helps combat fear generally, but it becomes imperative when that fear is being used to stoke violent behavior. 

The only way to fight back against a moral panic is to encourage more information, more questioning, more critical thinking. We need to tap into the rebellious teenage impulse to push back and direct that energy toward misinformation, not their peers.

I am idealistic, and I recognize that critical thinking skills are only one piece of the overall puzzle. Nevertheless, the rest of the equation becomes much easier to solve if teens are armed with these skills. We cannot make anyone act a certain way or believe anything, but we can encourage them to interrogate what they believe and why. And who knows, with a bit of luck maybe they’ll be able to pass on what they learn to their parents. 

Consent expert Kitty Stryker is the author of “Say More: Consent Conversations for Teens,” out April 26, 2024