Tuesday, January 06, 2004
God bless the Internet!
According to a report in Sydney Morning Herald' a new survey on internet use in the United States, has revealed that more than a third of all Americans wired to the Web, use it to get closer to God.
The survey observes that a total of 126 million people as of August 2003, have been accessing the world wide web to access religious and spiritual information.
This compares with 40 per cent of American internet users who have searched the web for political information, and 66 per cent who have sought health and medical data.
While, the number of people using the web for seeking political information and medical data increased by 57 per cent and 59 per cent respectively, 'religion surfers' almost doubled in number over the same period, from 18 million to 35 million, or an increase of 94 per cent.
Moreover, there has also been a significant increase in the daily use of the Internet to access religious information. While the overall numbers remain low, they nevertheless did climb from 3 million in 2000 to 5 million in 2002, an increase of 66 per cent.
The survey also found that those people accessing web-based religious information were evenly distributed across educational and socio-economic groups. The more experience one had on the Internet, the more likely one was to use it to search out religious material.
Only 19 per cent of people who had been wired for a year or less used the Internet as a source of information on religion. For those with six or more years of experience, the figure was closer to 40 per cent, suggesting that the volume of religion-related traffic on the web will continue to grow.
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