Our daughter has recently identified as a therian.
I believe this is a craze that has been rapidly spreading globally since 2023 through social media and Internet forums and is being adopted by predominantly girls between 9-12, who are for whatever reason susceptible to the idea they identify as a therian.
In short, this is an idea that has spread like a virus on social media - there has not been a great enlightenment amongst young girls that they are in some way an animal in a human body. There is no such thing as a therian.
Take for example homosexuality or other sexual orientations or transgender identity. These orientations have been documented for hundreds of years - until recently classified as disorders or mental illness. But the key thing is that there is a historical record of people who are different to the norms in a society.
The concept of a person being a therian has not such historical record - there are no anti-therian laws around the world, no persecution of those who believed they are therian, no books written that discuss the author's belief that they were therian.
This would imply that a very, very small portion of individuals have been therian (if it existed in reality) historically, in which case even where the concept of being a therian is popularised on social media only a tiny minority of people would realise they are therian.
However, in my daughter's class of 28 kids there are two other girl therians, so 3 of the 15 girls in class are therian - 20%! Statistically that is all but impossible. For thousands of years, 20% of 10-year old girls were therian but were ignorant to the fact until in 2023 and 2024 they discovered it on the internet and were enlightened to their true self.
The explanation is that a rapidly growing number of young children have 'discovered' an idea on social media and are falsely believing they are therian.
According to one popular therian community, the 'origin story' for therian on the online community was with AHWW in 1993. AHWW stands for 'Alt.horror.werewolves' which gives you a sense of where this all began. From this subculture permutations of the idea that one identified with an animal were formed by different individual - most likely not 10 year old girls. You can easily google 'AHWW therian' to check this yourself.
Fast forward to late 2023 and the stars aligned (most likely through a Tik Tok algorithm) and Google searches of therian skyrocketed, exposing young girls who for some reason were vulnerable to this idea that originated from what one imagines was a relatively male dominated community at Alt.horror.werewolves. The below chart from Google Trends shows the rapid rise of searches for 'therian'.
Show your children this chart and talk them through how social media is so powerful that it can convince people of radical ideas, especially where they feel they are or will be persecuted by parents or bullied.
Explain how some people have 'always' identified as being gay or bi-sexual or transgender but over hundreds of years there has not been a group of people that have identified as therian.
Even if people were therian, they must have been a much smaller portion of the population than were gay or transgender, given there is no history of therians. Some people say 10% of the population is gay or lesbian, some say less than 5%. That would mean 'real' therian would be much less - less than 0.01% (ie, one in ten thousand) if they have never turned up in history books.
Then ask them how many therians they personally know - my daughter knows at least 4 other girls in her year level. Her year level has about 100 students, say 50 are girls. Including her, 10% of girls in her year level of therian (and 20% of the girls in her class).
That is not possible, if for hundreds of years less than 0.01% (really 0.0001% given there is not written therian history) of people were actually therian.
Then ask them how many 15+ girls or 20 year old girls or 40 year old mothers they know that are therian. Likely zero. The only people becoming therians are young girls (and a very small number of boys).
The explanation is social media is pushing a new idea that incorporates animals, arts and craft, distrust of parent, quadrobics (moving on all four limbs), and a special sense of community and in combination this has a very strong appeal to young girls.
Now, it has only been a month since my daughter shared she was therian and only recently that I have realised the above. I have not yet talked with her about the above - so don't know how it will be received.
(note that Google Trends shows how popular the search for 'therian' was at a particular time, in Mar-24 it is 100, meaning that was the time the most searches by volume for the word therian and since Aug-23 the search numbers went from 20% of the Mar-24 peak to 50% of the peak in Nov-23 to 93% in Feb-24. According to Ubersuggest the peak number of monthly searches for 'therian' was 165,000 in Dec-23, which is slightly different to Google but shows the same spike in searches, likely driven by Tik Tok and Youtube algorithms that were promoting therian content, leading to girls searching on Google)
Hope my post is helpful to other parents.
For more on therian's origins with AHWW: aminoapps.com/c/officialtherian/page/blog/how-ahww-went-from-a-place-of-fandom-to-a-place-of-weres-then-came-the-trolls/bNpW_5MESouml076m1e42rQ40j2Y0PBXqZn