So help them vote. Volunteer with efforts to get out the youth vote. Push for universal mail in voting where you are, or at least early voting. Help get politicians and initiatives on the ballot that they actually care about.

Shaming and complaining about the demographic you want to reach accomplishes nothing.

But both sides are the same or my vote is worthless or it's too hard to vote or something

I really hope that they do.

Because I am worried about the camps.

To their credit, they are: https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/12/12/near-record-high-numbers-of-young-people-voted-during-the-midterms-signaling-a-possible-shift/

1 out of 4 for a midterm election is nothing to sneeze at.

Golly I remember once on Reddit saying that people should vote and by howdy did a whole bunch of angry people vote me down double digits because, you see, apparently voting doesn't matter and I made people feel sad.

The only cool kind of Republicans

I think it's mostly that very few of them identify as Republican.

But also, the less stigma around gender expression, the more kids will be open to explore theirs.

The best explanation I've heard is that it's similar to the stats for left-handed people. Way back in the day, almost no one "identified" as being left-handed. But once the stigma against left-handedness was eliminated, the numbers went up.

So in other words, yes, it's a reflection of LGBTQ+ becoming more acceptable, particularly among Gen Z. There could be other factors, but that's probably the main one.

It's a confluence of factors. LGBTQIA+ is sort of a gender/sexuallity/ phenotype physicality solidarity alliance and the actual boundries has grown in scope since the 80's.

Like take for instance asexual people. Asexuallity became a part of the solidarity when people reached out over the internet and and started realizing that there were a lot of people who just don't feel sexual attraction and that there are certain widely accepted forms of social coercion that revolve around pushing people towards sexual attraction. But asexuallity as a part of the LGBTQIA only really became a thing in the early 2000's. Non-binary trans identities are much the same. A lot of people were feeling the way they did about themselves in isolation but they had no frame of reference to think that they were not just the odd person out.

The other half is a society wide re-examination of compulsory heterosexuallity/cis gender hegemony. There are way more people out there who no longer define themselves by who they've chosen to have physical sexual experience with and now a lot more people are more frank about defining themselves by the range of people they are attracted to. Like if the majority of people artificially penalize a bi-person for choosing a same sex relationship a lot of people will just take the easier path and just narrow their choices or keep their liasons with the restricted choice secret and not assume the label.

I before I came out as trans initially figured I didn't count as trans because I both wasn't physically transitioning and my industry is somewhat hostile to trans people so I was very closeted ao I figured the label only really belonged to the people brave enough to live out of the closet... But eventually someone found me and was like "No, it's not aspirational. Even deep in the closet you are still trans."

This combination of destigmatization, solidarity messaging, the inclusion of whole other groups (like intersex people, gender minorities, asexuals) broadening the scope and outreach to the closeted means that more people generally self identify as LGBTQIA or queer.

Animal kingdom wise we're still less observably sexual fluid than other primates. Bisexuality is actually pretty ubiquitous particularly amongst male primates with it actually being the overwhelming norm in some species so chances are we are probably actually haven't seen the curve level off from suppressive stigma.

I believe it's your first option, acceptance for being yourself is the normal instead of a beating from your parents like pre 2000.

Bro, I'll tell you the same thing I was told as a young guy in my career. I'm in my 40's now and this was about 20 years ago. An older guy about to retire said something like 'ya know, everyone always says that the younger generation is lazy, or dumb, but from what I noticed you guys are doing it smarter and you'll be better than us.' I kinda thought that, but it was nice to hear.

Now I'll say about 10 years ago, I was recruiting in high school and those kids were leaps and bounds ahead of where my generation was. It was crazy how much they could socialize across cliques and it not matter. Now that I am in my 40's I have some family members in high school, and I just see them being better. I don't know how this will translate into the work force or a fight for a labor reform, but I think we need to be more open to their ideas than our elder generations were to us.