Abstract
Background
Although there is a growing body of research on the nature and content of digital religion, we still know little about the prevalence of digital religious and spiritual practices among different populations in North America. To what extent do digital technologies play a complementary role to in-person religious and spiritual activities only, or do they also reach out to and provide important spaces for new segments of the population removed from more conventional forms of organized religion?
Purpose
The goal is to answer this research question and to explore the prevalence of different types of digital religion practices specifically among young adult Millennials in both the U.S. and Canada. Three contrasting hypotheses are tested: that digital religion practices are prevalent among large segments of the Millennial population and are part of a wider turn towards individual spiritualization (H1); that digital religion practices are another set of religiosity indicators showing signs of a secular transition among Millennials (H2); or that both trends are occurring in tandem, in that some Millennials are practising digital religion, mostly but not exclusively tied to in-person religious activities and socialization (H3).
Methods
To test these hypotheses, we generate a series of descriptive and logit regression statistical analyses using novel and high-quality 2019 Millennial Trends Survey data from both Canada and the U.S.
Results
We find that (1) digital religion as measured in this study is a phenomenon present among many Millennials, although it is also not present among all or a vast majority of this demographic; (2) this is especially the case for more passive forms of digital religion, notably digital content consumption, compared with more active forms such as social media posting; (3) social environment does play an important role, with digital religion practices much more prevalent in the generally more religious U.S. context, compared with the generally more secular Canadian context; and (4) digital religion practices are often, but not always, tied to other in-person religious and spiritual activities among Millennials.
Conclusions and Implications
We find support especially for our third hypothesis (H3) with these results. Consequently, we argue that we should understand the individual spiritualization and secular transition frameworks as complementary, rather than in complete opposition, regarding the prevalence of digital religion among Millennials.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Quota sizes were based on Statistics Canada Census and U.S. Census bureau American Community Survey data with regards to the size of young adult subpopulations, and are available in the MTS’s technical documentation in the online supplementary materials.
Post-stratification weights were based on Statistics Canada Census and U.S. Census bureau American Community Survey data with regards to the size of young adult subpopulations. Two weighting variables were generated based on young adult (18–35) population age, gender, Census region of residence, level of education, country of birth, household income and race/ethnicity parameters: one for the Canadian subsample, and one for the American subsample. These weighting variables were generated using a sequential iterative technique.
See Figure A.1 in the online supplementary materials for a similar graph for monthly or more frequent social media posting about religion and spirituality.
Separate models with interaction terms between Canadian residence and frequency of religious service attendance, unchurched spiritual activity at least once a month as well as frequency of religious or spiritual education as a child were generated (results not shown here). None of these interaction effects on monthly or more frequent religious or spiritual digital content consumption or social media posting were statistically significant. In other words, the effects of frequency of religious service attendance, unchurched spiritual activity at least once a month and frequency of religious or spiritual education as a child on the two digital religion outcomes do not vary significantly between the U.S. and Canada.
References
Ammerman, Nancy. 2014. Sacred stories, spiritual tribes: Finding religion in everyday life. New York: Oxford University Press.
Armfield, Greg, and Robert Holbert. 2003. The relationship between religiosity and internet use. Journal of Media and Religion 2: 129–144.
Aupers, Stef, and Dick Houtman, eds. 2010. Religions of modernity: Relocating the sacred to the self and the digital. Leiden: Brill.
Berger, Peter. 1967. The sacred canopy: Elements of sociological theory of religion. Garden City: Doubleday.
Bibby, Reginald W. 2017. Resilient gods: Being pro-religious, low religious, or no religious in Canada. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Bibby, Reginald W., Joel Thiessen, and Monetta Bailey. 2019. The millennial mosaic: How pluralism and choice are shaping Canadian youth and the future of Canada. Toronto: Dundurn.
Brasher, Brenda E. 2001. Give me that online religion. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Brauer, Simon. 2018. The surprising predictable decline of religion in the United States. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 57(4): 654–675.
Bruce, Steve. 2017. Secular beats spiritual: The westernization of the easternization of the west. New York: Oxford University Press.
Campbell, Heidi A. 2012. Understanding the relationship between religion online and offline in a networked society. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80(1): 64–93.
Campbell, Heidi A., ed. 2013. Digital religion. Understanding religious practice in new media worlds. New York: Routledge.
Campbell, Heidi, and Oren Golan. 2011. Creating digital enclaves: Negotiation of the internet among bounded religious communities. Media, Culture & Society 33: 709–724.
Cheong, Pauline Hope. 2013. Authority. In Understanding religious practice in new media worlds, ed. Heidi A. Campbell, 72–87. New York: Routledge.
Clarke, Brian, and Stuart Macdonald. 2017. Leaving Christianity: Changing allegiances in Canada since 1945. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Crockett, Alasdair, and David Voas. 2006. Generations of decline: Religious change in 20th century Britain. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 45(4): 567–584.
Davie, Grace. 1994. Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without belonging. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Dawson, Lorne, and Doug Cowan, eds. 2004. Religion online: Finding faith on the Internet. New York: Routledge.
Downey, Allen B. 2014. Religious affiliation, education and Internet use. http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.5534. Accessed 24 Mar 2021.
Drescher, Elizabeth. 2016. Choosing our religion: The spiritual lives of America’s nones. New York: Oxford University Press.
Farrell, Justin. 2011. The divine online: Civic organizing, identity building, and Internet fluency among different religious groups. Journal of Media and Religion 10(2): 73–90.
Forbes, Bruce David, and Jeffrey H. Mahan. 2017. Religion and popular culture in America. Oakland: University of California Press.
Frost, Jonathon K., and Norman E. Youngblood. 2014. Online religion and religion online: Reform Judaism and web-based communication. Journal of Media and Religion 13(2): 49–66.
Fuller, Robert. 2001. Spiritual but not religious: Understanding unchurched America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gauthier, François, and Jean-Philippe. Perreault, eds. 2008. Jeunes et religion au Québec. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval.
Gauthier, François, and Jean-Philippe. Perreault. 2013. Les héritiers du baby-boom. Jeunes et religion au Québec. Social Compass 60(4): 527–543.
Heelas, Paul, and Linda Woodhead. 2005. The spiritual revolution: Why religion Is giving way to spirituality. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Hervieu-Léger, Danielle. 1999. Le pèlerin et le converti: La religion en mouvement. Paris: Flammarion.
Højsgaard, Morten, and Margit Warburg, eds. 2005. Religion and cyberspace. London: Routledge.
Houtman, Dick, and Stef Aupers. 2007. The spiritual turn and the decline of tradition: The spread of post-Christian spirituality in 14 Western countries, 1981–2000. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 46(3): 305–320.
Howe, Neil, and William Strauss. 2000. Millennials rising: The next great generation. New York: Vintage Press.
Knowles, Steven. 2013. Rapture ready and the world wide web: Religious authority on the Internet. Journal of Media and Religion 12(3): 128–143.
Luckmann, Thomas. 1967. The invisible religion: The problem of religion in modern society. London: MacMillan.
Martin, David. 1978. A general theory of secularization. New York: Harper & Row.
Martin, David. 2005. On secularization: Towards a revised general theory. Burlington: Ashgate.
McClure, Paul K. 2016. Faith and facebook in a pluralistic age: The effects of social networking sites on the religious beliefs of emerging adults. Sociological Perspectives 59(4): 818–834.
McClure, Paul K. 2017. Tinkering with technology and religion in the digital age: The effects of Internet use on religious belief, behavior, and belonging. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 56(3): 481–497.
McClure, Paul K. 2020. The buffered, technological self: Finding associations between Internet use and religiosity. Social Compass 67(3): 461–478.
Pew Research Center. 2001. CyberFaith: How Americans pursue religion online. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2001/12/23/cyberfaith-how-americans-pursue-religion-online/. Accessed 24 Mar 2021.
Pew Research Center. 2010. Millennials: A portrait of generation next. Confident. connected. open to change. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/02/24/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change/. Accessed 2 Dec 2020.
Pew Research Center, 2019. Defining generations: Where millennials end and generation Z begins. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/. Accessed 26 Oct 2020.
Prensky, Marc. 2001. Digital natives, digital immigrants part 1. On the Horizon 9(5): 1–6.
Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Sherkat, Darren E. 2014. Changing faith: The dynamics and consequences of Americans’ shifting identities. New York: New York University Press.
Smith, Christian, and Patricia Snell. 2009. Souls in transition: The religious and spiritual lives of emerging adults. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stolz, Jörg., Detlef Pollack, and Nan Dirk De. Graaf. 2020. Can the state accelerate the secular transition? Secularization in East and West Germany as a natural experiment. European Sociological Review 36(4): 626–642.
Starr, Chelsea, Kristin Waldo, and Matthew Kauffman. 2019. Digital irreligion: Christian deconversion in an online community. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 58(2): 494–512.
Steensland, Brian, Lynn D. Robinson, W. Bradford Wilcox, Jerry Z. Park, Mark D. Regnerus, and Robert D. Woodberry. 2000. The measure of American religion: Toward improving the state of the art. Social Forces 79(1): 291–318.
Strauss, William, and Neil Howe. 1991. Generations: The history of America’s future, 1584 to 2069. New York: William Morrow and Company.
Taylor, Charles. 2007. A secular age. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Thiessen, Joel, and Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme. 2020. None of the above: Nonreligious identity in the U.S. and Canada. New York: New York University Press.
Turner, Bryan. 2007. Religious authority and the new media. Theory Culture & Society 24: 117–134.
Twenge, Jean. 2017. iGen: Why today’s super-connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy–and completely unprepared for adulthood–and what that means for the rest of us. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Voas, David. 2008. The continuing secular transition. In The role of religion in modern societies, ed. Detlef Pollack and Daniel VA. Olsen, 25–48. New York: Routledge.
Voas, David. 2009. The rise and fall of fuzzy fidelity in Europe. European Sociological Review 25(2): 155–168.
Voas, David, and Mark Chaves. 2016. Is the United States a counterexample to the secularization thesis? American Journal of Sociology 121(5): 1517–1556.
Ward Sr., Mark. 2018. A new kind of church: The religious media conglomerate as a “denomination.” Journal of Media and Religion 17(3–4): 117–133.
Weber, Max. 1993. The sociology of religion. Translated by Ephraim Fischoff. Boston: Beacon Press.
Wertheim, Margaret. 2000. The pearly gates of cyberspace: A history of space from Dante to the Internet. London: Virago Press.
Wilkins-Laflamme, Sarah. 2014. Towards religious polarization? Time effects on religious commitment in US, UK and Canadian regions. Sociology of Religion 75(2): 284–308.
Wuthnow, Robert. 2007. After the Baby Boomers: How twenty- and thirty-somethings are shaping the future of American religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wilkins-Laflamme, S. Digital Religion Among U.S. and Canadian Millennial Adults. Rev Relig Res 64, 225–248 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-021-00463-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-021-00463-0