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Is the gay ‘Top Shortage’ real? New study offers some answers

by Timothy••0

A large-scale study of more than 140,000 users of a gay dating app has found clear age and regional differences in sexual-role identification. Younger users were more likely to identify as Bottom or Versatile, while older users were more likely to identify as Top or leave the category unspecified. But the researchers caution that the findings do not prove that a real-world ‘Top Shortage‘ exists.

Is there really a shortage of gay men who identify as Top? A new study provides some of the largest data yet on the question, but the answer is considerably more complicated than the internet meme might suggest.

Published online on 11 August 2026 in The Journal of Sex Research, the study examined anonymised data from 141,156 active users of Surge, a global gay dating and chat app with more than 8.5 million users. Researchers Francesco Rampazzo, Morten Kjær Thomsen, and Milan Kovačič analysed users aged 18 to 50+ across 129 countries.

The study found substantial differences in sexual-role identification by age and region. Younger men were more likely to specify a role, particularly Bottom or Versatile, while older users were more likely to identify as Top or leave the role field unspecified.

Bottom and Versatile dominate among those who choose a label

The researchers found that most Surge users did not actively select a sexual role. Of the 141,156 people in the final sample, 68.6% left the role field at its default ‘Unspecified’ setting.

Among the 31.4% who selected a role, Bottom was the most common identification at 38.5%, closely followed by Versatile at 37.4%. Top accounted for 20.6%, while 3.5% selected ‘Not Into Penetration’.

The researchers stress that the large unspecified category cannot simply be interpreted as people who do not have a preference. Because ‘Unspecified’ is the registration default, users may have left it untouched for many reasons, including privacy concerns or simply not completing their profile.

The platform also did not offer a ‘Side’ option during the study period. Users could instead choose Top, Bottom, Versatile, Not Into Penetration or leave the field unspecified.

Younger users are more likely to identify as Bottom or Versatile

The age differences are particularly striking. Role disclosure declined steadily with age, from 44.5% among users aged 18–19 to below 30% among those over 50.

Among users who did specify a role, the share identifying as Bottom was highest among the youngest users, exceeding 50% in the 18–21 age range. That share declined with age, while the share identifying as Top increased. Versatile identification also changed with age, although less dramatically.

The researchers’ statistical model illustrates the pattern particularly clearly. When looking at modelled shares with Europe as the reference region, the predicted Bottom share fell from 16.1% at age 20 to 2.5% at age 65. Over the same age range, the predicted Top share increased from 5.6% to 10.1%. The share leaving the field unspecified rose from 65.3% to 76.2%.

This is where the idea of a ‘Top Shortage’ becomes particularly interesting. The data do show that younger users are, proportionally, less likely to identify as Top and more likely to identify as Bottom or Versatile. But that does not mean that there are objectively fewer Tops available for dating or sex.

The study is cross-sectional, meaning that it compares people of different ages at one point in time. The researchers explicitly caution that the data cannot distinguish between genuine generational change, effects of the period in which people were observed and changes associated with different stages of life.

Europe is the ‘Versatile’ continent

There are also pronounced geographical differences.

Among users who specified a role, Versatile was the most common identification in Europe, accounting for 41.2%, and in Oceania, where it represented 40.5%. Bottom was most common in Africa, at 43.2%, and in the Americas, at 39.8%. 

Asia had the most evenly distributed pattern and also recorded the highest share selecting Not Into Penetration, at 7.3%. Something I experienced in Japan! 

The researchers found that role disclosure itself also varied considerably. It was highest in Europe, where 66.6% of users specified a role, and Asia, at 60.6%. It was considerably lower in Africa, at 27.3%, and the Americas, at 27.9%.

The model-based analysis found further differences after accounting for age. Compared with Europe, the predicted Bottom share was higher in Asia and Africa, while the Versatile share was lower in both regions.

Why might younger men identify differently?

The study does not establish why these differences occur. The researchers say the analysis is descriptive and cannot test the mechanisms behind the patterns.

However, they discuss several possible explanations. Sexual-role labels are not simply descriptions of behaviour: they can also carry social meanings related to masculinity, femininity, stigma and status.

Previous research cited in the study suggests that some men may avoid the Bottom label because of its associations with femininity or reduced masculinity, even when their sexual behaviour includes receptive sex. Conversely, Versatile identification can be associated with greater flexibility and with a rejection of strictly one-directional sexual roles.

The researchers suggest that the higher prevalence of Versatile identification among younger users could be consistent with greater openness to sexual flexibility and weaker attachment to traditional gendered binaries. Among older users, leaving the field unspecified or identifying as Top could be consistent with privacy preferences or stigma surrounding receptive roles, although the study cannot directly test those explanations.

A dating-app study is not a census of gay men

The study’s scale is impressive, but its limitations are important.

The researchers did not analyse all gay or bisexual men. They analysed active users of one dating app. Surge users are likely to be disproportionately younger, urban and digitally connected, while older men, people with limited internet access and those living in environments where same-sex relationships are heavily stigmatised may be underrepresented.

The researchers also point out that dating-app design, algorithms and visibility mechanisms can influence both who appears on the platform and what users choose to disclose. The role categories themselves simplify a much more complicated reality, and people may change roles depending on their partner or circumstances.

There is another important distinction: identifying as Top, Bottom or Versatile is not necessarily the same thing as always behaving that way. The study notes that previous research has found sexual-role flexibility to be more common in practice than people’s labels might suggest.

So, is there a ‘Top Shortage’?

The study provides some evidence for the observation behind the longstanding ‘Top Shortage’ joke: among Surge users, younger people are considerably less likely than older people to identify as Top and considerably more likely to identify as Bottom.

But it does not establish that there is a shortage of Tops in the wider gay population.

Indeed, the researchers’ central conclusion is more nuanced. Sexual-role identification remains an important part of how many men who have sex with men present themselves online, but the labels appear to be used in increasingly flexible and context-dependent ways, particularly among younger users.

In other words, the internet may have finally acquired some scientific data for its favourite debate — but the data do not quite settle the argument. They show a clear age pattern in how men label themselves on one dating app, not a global headcount of Tops, Bottoms and Versatiles.

And that may be the most interesting finding of all: the supposed ‘top shortage’ could partly reflect changing ways of describing sexual preferences rather than a simple shortage of men willing to take the insertive role.

Gay adventures of the homosexual kind

🇧🇪 Blogger, keen vexillologist, train conductor NMBS/SNCB, traveller, F1 follower, friend of Dorothy.

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