More and More Young People Know Someone With Nonbinary Pronouns

More than a third of all young people say they know someone who uses nonbinary pronouns.

According to a new Pew Research Center survey published Friday, 35 percent of respondents who belong to Generation Z (i.e., people who could probably break down the basic plot structure of Camp Rock 2 without checking its Wikipedia page first) say they know someone who "prefers that others use gender-neutral pronouns to refer to them," which I'm guessing is Pew speak for "uses nonbinary pronouns like they or ze."

This compares to 25 percent of Millennials (i.e., people who could tell you where they were when they found out that Aaliyah had died), 16 percent of respondents from Generation X (i.e., the people whose aesthetics we've long since nostalgia-vultured to the ground), 12 percent of Boomers (i.e., world ruiners), and 7 percent of respondents from the Silent Generation (i.e., old).

The survey co-authors -- Pew's director of social trends research Kim Parker, research associate Nikki Graf, and senior researcher Ruth Igielnik -- say that "these findings [about nonbinary pronouns] seem to speak more to exposure than to viewpoint, as roughly equal shares of Gen Zers and Millennials say society should be more accepting of people who don't identify as either a man or a woman."

Other Gen Z findings: They don't like Trump, they think the government should do a lot more than it's currently doing, they think increased ethnic and racial diversity is a good thing, and they're more likely to agree that global warming is caused by human activity. Smart!

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