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American teens show strong interest in using Internet for religious contacts

By DAVID WILLIAMSON
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- Overall, three times more U.S. adolescents with access to the Internet use it for religious purposes rather than for accessing pornography, a unique University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study shows.

Analysts with the UNC-based National Study of Youth and Religion say that the percentage of teens ages 13 to 17 who identify themselves as religious and who use the Internet for visiting religious Websites is sizeable. The first findings from their new survey of 2,600 teens indicates that the Web has become a key place of religious connection for a significant proportion of U.S. adolescents, a fact never documented before.

"Forty percent of those teens who say that their faith is extremely important to them report using the Internet to visit religious Websites a few times each month or more often," said Dr. Christian S. Smith, study principal investigator. "Another 20 percent who describe their faith as very important also say they visit religious Websites a few times each month or more."

That compares to only 4 percent of those who say that their faith is not very important to them, he said. Not surprisingly, fewer than 1 percent of those who describe their faith as being not at all important visit religious Websites that often. More than 75 percent of those with access reported using the Internet for help with homework, by far the most common reason.

Smith is Stuart Chapin Distinguished Professor and associate chair of sociology in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Among teens surveyed with access to the Internet, 17 percent visited religious Websites a few times each month or more often. Conversely, teens who identified themselves as having little interest in religion were much more likely to use the Internet to access pornography than their more religious peers.

Among those who said that their religious faith was not at all important, 14 percent used the Internet to visit pornographic Websites a few times a month or more often. That compared to only 3 percent each of U.S. teens who said their religious faith was extremely important or very important.

"These are interesting findings because many parents and other adults are rightly worried about teens accessing pornography on the Internet, although I suspect few adults think about teens using the Internet for religious and faith purposes," Smith said. "If the teens we surveyed were telling us the truth, then I think our findings raise some interesting questions about teens and different moral influences in the media."

The UNC work is believed to be the first major study to show how important the Internet is to teens interested in religion and spirituality, Smith said. Also, it shows for the first time that the frequency of pornographic Website visits is inversely proportional to how committed a teen is to religion.

"Over thousands of years, religions have used different means of communicating," Smith said. "Invention of the printing press, for instance, had huge consequences for religious communications. We are in the midst of a digital revolution right now, and it will be very interesting to see how successfully and carefully religions use the Internet and other new technologies for their own purposes."

The National Study of Youth and Religion is a four-year, UNC-based research project funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. It began in August 2001 and will continue until August 2005.

Its purpose is to examine the influence of religion and spirituality in the lives of U.S. adolescents and to identify effective practices in youth’s religious, moral and social development. The project also is intended to describe the extent to which adolescents participate in and benefit from programs and opportunities that religious communities offer.

Fostering national discussions about the influence of religion in youths’ lives to encourage reflection on cultural and institutional practices is another goal, as is understanding the Internet’s growing importance to religious life.

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Photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/faculty/smith_christian.jpg

Note: To reach Smith, call Roxann Miller, director of communication for the National Study of Youth and Religion, at (919) 966-1559. More information is available at www.youthandreligion.org.

News Services Contact: David Williamson, (919) 962-8596