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They are also more likely to identify outside the traditional gender binary compared to older generations, according to a new GLAAD survey shared exclusively with BuzzFeed News.

Young people between the ages of 18 and 34 are twice as likely to openly identify as part of the LGBT community compared to the generation before them, according to a survey conducted and released by GLAAD today.

GLAAD's 3rd annual Accelerating Acceptance report, which was created in partnership with Harris Poll, surveyed 2,037 U.S. adults (ages 18 and older) in November of 2016. The survey found that 20% of millennials identify as openly LGBT while only 7% of the baby boomer generation (ages 52-71) would openly label themselves as such. Acceptance of the LGBT community was also found to be at an all-time high.

“America is the most accepting that it has ever been. Having twenty percent of millennials identify as LGBTQ is pretty groundbreaking,” Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD's President and CEO, told BuzzFeed News. “What I want to see is that they continue to flourish and blossom as their true and authentic selves.”

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While the Acceelerating Acceptance survey questions shift each year, the goal remains the same — to measure how comfortable or uncomfortable the public is with the LGBT community.

“It’s important to understand how comfortable people are with certain situations – everything from how people feel about their neighbors being LGBTQ or having a transgender child on a sports team with their own kid,” said Ellis. “You can’t change what you don’t measure – and so this report is critical to the work that GLAAD does.”

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The survey also found that 12% of millennials identify outside the gender binary, as either transgender or gender-nonconforming.

That nearly doubles the number of transgender and gender-nonconforming people reported from Generation X (ages 35-51).

“We’ve seen at GLAAD for years that youth are more and more identifying outside the binary — so the data itself isn’t surprising,” said Ellis. “But we are very pleased to see that more and more youth are feeling like they can freely express who they are.”

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But although more young people openly identify as LGBT, the study found that non-LGBT millennials are less likely to know someone who identifies as simply “gay” or “lesbian.”

Older people in the LGBT community are more likely to use more traditional binary terms, such as “gay/lesbian” or “man/woman.” Young people have vastly expanded the vocabulary.

Amberlaneroberts / Getty Images

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