Only two thirds of people aged 16 to 22 identify as heterosexual

YOUNG people are more open to sexual experimentation than ever before, figures suggest. Only two thirds of Generation Z – people born from the mid-nineties to the early Noughties – identify as solely heterosexual, in stark contrast to previous generations.

Research by Ipsos MORI found that 66per cent of young people aged between 16 and 22 were “exclusively heterosexual”. Among millennials, 71 per cent said they were exclusively heterosexual, as did 85 per cent of those in “Gen X” (mid-sixties to early Eighties), and 88per cent of baby boomers (midforties to early Sixties). The research suggested social media was playing a part in the change, as young people had ready access to information about non-binary sexuality on the internet.

The statistics showed the youngest generation was “being affected by more open and fluid attitudes”. Hannah Shrimpton, a report author, said: “They have grown up at a time when gender as a simple binary and fixed identity has been questioned much more widely. This is new and affects wider views of gender, sexuality and identity.”

The figures suggested a higher level of openness about homosexuality than previous polls and that an increasingly “liberal context” in which gay relationships were seen as acceptable had led to a “less binary view of sexuality”, in which there was no need to identify as exclusively gay or straight.

They showed that three in five British 15 and 16-year-olds thought of sexuality as a sliding scale where it was possible to be somewhere in the middle. More than 70 per cent of those in Generation Z (1995-2014) and 69 per cent of Millennials (1981-96) had no problem with homosexual relationships, compared with 43 per cent of baby boomers.

However, it added that in some ways the lives of the youngest adults in society “hark back to the Forties”. It said: “Many more are staying at home with their parents past the age of 18, and families are closer.”