While just 16 students claimed to be "non-binary" during the 2019-2020 school year, that number rose to a staggering 675 by the 2022-2023 school year, according to New Jersey Department of Education enrollment data.

Forty-one of the 675 are reportedly elementary school students.

Erika Sanzi, director of outreach at Parents Defending Education, a nonprofit parental rights group, told the Free Beacon the jump reflects the fact that divergent gender identification has become a "social contagion."

"These numbers aren't surprising to anyone who has been following the massive social contagion of adopting different gender identities, especially among adolescent girls," Sanzi said.

Conservatives have vocally raised the alarm about the "social contagion" element of transgender and "non-binary" identification in recent years, noting that social media use among young people and the adulation for divergent "gender identities" has triggered the astronomical rise in children and young people claiming not to identify with their own sex.

RELATED: LGBT identification is largely driven by social media influence and peer pressure

Even Dr. Marci Bowers, president of the radical World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which sets the standards of care for gender clinics nationwide, recently acknowledged that transgender identification has become trendy.

"There are people in my community who will deny that there's any sort of 'social contagion'—I shouldn't say social contagion, but at least peer influence on some of these decisions," Bowers, a man who claims to be awoman, told The New York Times in January. "I think that's just not recognizing human behavior"... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

Continue reading here.

To receive daily emails from Breaking Christian News to your inbox CLICK HERE

More Than 100 Farmers Step Up to Harvest Fields for Father Diagnosed With ALS

WATCH: Veteran and Family Given Home after Losing Everything to Hurricane Ian

Jonathan Keller: I Was Wrong About Charlie Kirk

From the Sidelines to the Senate: Finebaum Might Suit Up for Politics

Democrat Attorneys-General Sue to Keep Taxpayer Funding for Gender Ideology in Schools

Pregnant Liberal Woman Suffers Fatal Tylenol Overdose after Trying to 'Prove Trump Wrong,' Now Allegedly on Ventilator Fighting for Her Life: REPORT

Fetterman Denounces Dems' 'Extreme Rhetoric'

'Historic Day': Trump Reveals Plan to End Gaza War, and See Return of Hostages; Will Hamas Accept?

Tim Allen Freed from Unforgiveness After Seeing Erika Kirk Forgive Charlie’s Killer: ‘That Moment Deeply Affected Me’

Crucial White House Meeting: Netanyahu and President Trump May Determine Fate of Hostages and End of War

Three in Four Mayors Want MORE Federal Help Combating Crime in Their Cities

Dearborn Residents Clash With City Council over Mosque's Early Morning Call to Prayer

Eric Adams Drops Out of NYC Mayor’s Race

4 People Killed in Shooting at Mormon Church in Michigan on Sunday, Building Torched

Give Him 15: Mercy is Our New Currency

A Little Baby Girl Is Rescued from a Dumpster in Texas. A Dumpster

Nonprofit Asks Feds to Investigate Schools' 'Gender-Affirming Care' Practices

Latest Move by the President to Prevent a Government Shutdown Is Brilliant

Trump Closes Loophole Allowing Illegal Aliens to Drive Commercial Trucks After Tragic Accidents

Trump's Administration Finds 25,000 Missing Migrant Children