Tuesday, April 20, 2004
64% of wired Americans have used the Internet for spiritual or religious purposes
Nearly two-thirds of the adults who use the Internet in the United States have used the Internet for faith-related matters. That represents nearly 82 million Americans. Among the most popular and important spiritually-related online activities:
- 38% of the 128 million Internet users have sent and received email with spiritual content.
- 35% have sent or received online greeting cards related to religious holidays.
- 32% have gone online to read news accounts of religious events and affairs.
- 21% have sought information about how to celebrate religious holidays.
- 17% have looked for information about where they could attend religious services.
Those who use the Internet for religious or spiritual purposes are more likely to be women, white, middle aged, college educated, and relatively well-to-do.
The online faithful are somewhat more active as Internet users than the rest of the Internet population. On a typical day, 63% of them are online. Some 56% of them have been online for six years or longer. And 60% have broadband connections somewhere in their life (at home or at work), compared to 54% of all Internet users.
- 55% of the online faithful are women, compared to the overall Internet population, which is 50-50 in its gender composition.
- 83% are white, compared to the overall Internet population, which is 75% white.
- 49% have college educations, compared to 36% of the entire Internet population.
- 47% are between the ages of 30 and 49. This is the same proportion of this age cohort as the overall Internet population.
- 31% live in households earning more than $75,000, compared to 26% of the overall Internet population.
The “online faithful” are devout and they use the Internet for personal spiritual matters more than for traditional religious functions or work related to their places of worship. But their faith-activity online seems to augment their already-strong commitments to their congregations.
As a group, these 82 million people are devout and more likely to be connected to religious institutions and practices than other Internet users. Half of the online faithful go to church at least once a week and many describe themselves as evangelicals.
Higher percentages of the online faithful report online activities related to personal spirituality and religiosity than activities more related to involvement in traditional religious functions or organizations. This is interesting because many analysts have assumed that the Internet would make it more likely for people to leave churches in favor of more flexible online options for religious or spiritual activity. Faith-related activity online is a supplement to, rather than a substitute for offline religious life.
This study found that the Internet does provide people with sources of information, symbolic resources, and opportunities for networking and interaction outside the boundaries of formal religious bodies or traditions. Yet it also found that the online faithful seem more interested in augmenting their traditional faith practices and experiences by personally expressing their own faith and spirituality, as opposed to seeking something new or different in the online environment.
Some 28% of the online faithful said they had used the Internet to seek or exchange information about their own religious faith or tradition with others, while 26% said they had used the Internet to seek or exchange information about the religious faiths or traditions of others.
In a follow up question about the motives of those who got information about others, 51% said they did this out of curiosity so as to find out about others’ beliefs, 13% said they did it for purposes of their own spiritual growth, and 31% said both those reasons were important to them.
There is a tendency for those who do describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” to be among the heaviest Internet users. They also tend to be more likely to engage in personal spiritual and religious behaviors associated with online “seeking” than they are to engage in online activities related to religious congregations or organizations. However, those who describe themselves as “both spiritual and religious” report even higher levels of these personally-oriented activities and are actually the majority of the online faithful.
- 54% of the online faithful describe themselves as religious and spiritual.
- 33% describe themselves as spiritual but not religious.
- 6% describe themselves as religious but not spiritual.
- 4% describe themselves as not religious and not spiritual.
Online Evangelicals are a significant subgroup of the American religious landscape. This study found them to resemble other Protestants in terms of their Internet behaviors in some ways, but to be unique in other ways. They are slightly less experienced in Internet use than other categories of religious affiliation. Conversely, they are more likely than others to engage in all categories of online religious activity. For instance, 69% report going online for personal religious or spiritual purposes. They are also more likely than Protestants overall to seek out information about both their own religion (36% report doing so) and other religions (33% do).
April 7, 2004
By Stewart M. Hoover, Ph.D., University of Colorado
Lynn Schofield Clark, Ph.D, University of Colorado
Lee Rainie, Director, Pew Internet & American Life Project
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