For my age group (late teens) a lot of it is there's a lot of social pressure, especially in certain social groups (art/theatre/choir kids, LGB youth, especially so for girls) to buy into the ideology, and I remember it started becoming popular when we were in our early teens, with a lot of the stuff spreading via social media. Nowadays when I open up Instagram, the stuff my old classmates (mostly girls) are posting on their stories is like 1/3 BLM, 1/3 "if your feminism isn't [xyz], it isn't worth shit" (one post said a whole list of things, including "male-inclusive" lmfao), and 1/3 TWAW/TMAM/NBsANB shit, with some Biden propaganda sprinkled in here and there. So yeah, realistically some of them are just virtue signaling but many of them are genuinely indoctrinated when you talk to them. And why wouldn't they be, when this shit gets pushed on us at school too? We never had any formal "education" on gender identity or anything like that, but we'd get chastised in class for accidentally 'misgendering' or 'deadnaming' classmates we'd known since elementary school, so it's not like we could express anything critical of trans. The good news is I think a large portion of us are sick of it/think it's bullshit, but the opposition isn't very vocal; really only the Trump supporters can get away with being open about that and still have friends, and that's a niche. What's telling is more how many of us are silent on the issue, especially for kids who are otherwise pretty vocal about politics or liberal/left-leaning. The unfortunate thing is a lot of my generation really strongly associates LGB with TQ+, so I'm really worried about the probably inevitable coming backlash.

Part of what concerns me most is how targeted the push for trans acceptance is on LGB youth—many have been sold on the lie that they are in any way like us or that we owe them our rights, and so support them with an almost religious fervor. I've seen over the past few years that even some of the kids who were initially skeptical of the gender identity stuff have drunk the koolaid (like an old friend who used to say "there are only two genders" sophomore year who just shared an informational post a few weeks back about supporting non-binary gender identities; and she's the only out lesbian I know who hasn't gone trans or non-binary)[ETA: I forgot I knew one other who hasn't either, I have no idea what her opinions are on the TQ+ stuff, she doesn't post about it ever, which I guess might be a good sign]—whether it's for woke points or genuine change of belief, idk, but either way it's kinda disturbing. The new fad is pronouns in bio—that's even reached some of the straight kids who never really knew about or cared about this stuff before. At the same time, some of the girls who really bought into it early on in high school to the point of adopting a non-binary or trans-guy identity themselves have since desisted (and a couple grew their hair back out or began presenting more femininely again, which sends a weird message, but that's neither here nor there). Gay guys seem to be more spared from it, I'd imagine bi guys as well (I only know one guy who's out as bisexual, so I can't comment on them as a group), but lesbians and bi girls have been pretty affected, with lesbians getting the worst of it I think. Plenty of girls who claim LGBTQWERTY status but who I'm pretty sure are actually heterosexual have gotten sucked in too.

An important factor, too, in my age group's support for trans ideology is the demographics of transgender people. At my (moderately large) school, there were multiple female students in my grade who claimed trans-guy or non-binary status, but to my knowledge not a single male one claimed to be trans or non-binary. This fits in with the demographics of the population too—trans youth tend to be TiFs or female non-binary, while IIRC adults 30+ are more often TiMs. So when someone my age who has only a passing awareness of the issue thinks of trans people, what comes to mind is the TiFs we know, who are at worst mildly delusional, obnoxiously PC, self-centered, or weirdly obsessed with gay men, but maybe a slight majority of whom are generally nice and unassuming but seem to have low self-esteem. The TiMs who are sometimes genuinely a threat to women or children, the ones who appropriate groups and online communities and moderate them with an iron fist, the ones who take women's political representation, the ones who colonize lesbian spaces, the ones for whom it's a fetish… they aren't even on our radar most of the time, so when liberals/TRAs push for the trans-inclusive stuff with bathrooms/changing rooms/shelters, it's easy to dismiss the opposition as right-wing fear-mongering or older people stuck in their ways (plenty of youthful arrogance mixed in there, TBF), because that's not the image we're associating with the group if we haven't really looked into it. If someone my age has a negative view of trans people from their experience, they're more likely to think they are mildly delusional or self-obsessed, rather than fetishistic or threatening.

I think the whole ideology is relying on adults having the wool pulled over their eyes. IRL I've heard adults/parents express criticism of what's going on, but they always seem to miss the point—they think the issue lies in kids thinking they're boring for being heterosexual, or clout being given to 'marginalized' identities, and think all they need to hear is that it's okay to be straight, and then the issue will resolve, but that's not really the issue—otherwise straight kids would be pretending to be gay or bisexual instead, not non-binary, trans, etc, and those who are gay/lesbian/bisexual definitely wouldn't be claiming a gender identity cause they wouldn't feel the need to. It's another part of the forced association between LGB and trans—a lot of adults associate them too (again why I'm not looking forward to the inevitable backlash, although I know a lot don't have a problem with LGB but only TQ+, just there's no real way to know how things are going to play out).

It seems like the effects have gotten worse for kids a few years younger than me, like my younger sibling's age group, and I don't really see it going away within the next couple years—I think it'll take a little longer before the trans/gender identity movement reaches its head, and by then so much damage will have been done.

TL;DR: peer pressure, indoctrination, propaganda spread on social media, only knowing TiFs, forced teaming with LGB issues, the vain desire to be "on the right side of history"… all of that's contributed to support for trans advocacy in my age group.

I think trans ideology is up there with the normalization of pornography and "sex work" in destroying my generation. There's so much propaganda bolstering support for both, and it's having terrible effects on my age group, especially the girls.