According to this article at RNS, a recent research study found that 32% of American and Canadian millennials consume religion digitally but only 5% said they consume digitally without also participating in person. The millennials are an interesting population because they grew up before smart phones.
The author of this research study, sociologist Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, left it up to the respondents to define digital religion themselves. Here are a few quotes from her:
"For the most part, people are both involved in person and supplement that through digital religion."
"There are a lot of savvy religious users using it to complement existing ties (to religion)."
"The overall takeaway for me was that digital religion is definitely a thing, but it's a thing that only a chuck of the (millennial) population does."
These findings match what we have discussed in class previously, namely that online and digital resources tend to supplement other existing forms of religion rather than displace them. As children who grew up with smart phones enter adulthood, new studies will be needed to see if they manifest the same pattern.
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