Young people are becoming increasingly intolerant of sexual minorities. This is shown by a survey that mapped young people’s views on LGBT people. However, the media carefully avoids reporting which group is responsible for the increase.

According to a recently published report that examined the attitudes of more than 8,000 Swedish ninth-graders towards LGBT people, the number of young people expressing intolerance towards sexual minorities has increased from 3 to 15 percent since 2013. Boys express greater negativity than girls.

RFSL Ungdom sees the development as serious and is now calling for strong measures from the political side.

– I was very sad when I saw the numbers today, but not that shocked. Our members encounter this every day, and we see it in our activities. RFSL’s school information officers have also testified to this, and have had to take measures to ensure that they are protected from the sometimes harsh resistance they encounter in the classrooms, says Elias Fjellander, chairman of RFSL Ungdom, to the magazine Syre.

Several media outlets are reporting on increased intolerance towards sexual minorities, and the development is described as both surprising and worrying. However, the media is generally reluctant to provide information about what is behind the increase.

– We know what people think, but not why. We would like to see more research on it, says Fjellander.

However, there are facts that point to the reasons: Since the previous survey in 2013, Sweden has undergone a major demographic change, and the proportion of young people with an immigrant background has increased sharply. According to the National Agency for Education, 18 percent of ninth-graders had a foreign background in 2013, a figure that had increased to 28 percent by 2025.

The survey clearly shows that students with a foreign background are more likely to show negative attitudes towards sexual minorities than students with a Swedish background.

Among foreign-born students, 21.2 percent show negative attitudes towards sexual minorities. Among Swedish-born students with foreign-born parents, the corresponding figure is 22.6 percent, and among Swedish-born students with Swedish-born parents, the figure is 12.1 percent.

Forum för levande historia (The Forum for Living History) has conducted a survey of school students’ attitudes towards various minority groups on behalf of the Swedish government.

Today, the abbreviation “LGBTI+” is often used to include many different sexual minorities. In order to be able to compare with 2013, when “HBT” was the abbreviation used, the survey in 2024/2025 has also only used the abbreviation “HBT”, i.e. homosexual, bisexual and transgender persons. The current survey also studied attitudes towards the groups immigrants, Afro-Swedes/blacks, Jews, Muslims, Roma and Sami.