Religious Identity and Internet Use in America

I recently asked Aaron Smith, research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project, if they had any data looking at how internet use might vary by degree of religious affiliation. Turns out that Pew hasn't really dug deep into that question, so I can't tell you whether Mormons tweet more than Baptists, or if Episcopalians update their Facebook profiles more often than Lutherans. Smith was kind enough to dig into some more generic cross-tabs that Pew does have pertaining to technology usage and whether someone identifies with a religion ("affiliated") vs the unaffiliated, agnostics, and atheists among us.

The big headline is that, Smith says, "Overall, the 'unaffiliated' are more likely to go online than the 'affiliated' by a fairly significant margin—89% vs. 74%. So, if you think the internet is full of Godless heathens, you've got your proof. Seriously, I think this does suggest that there is a modest inverse relationship between affiliating with a religion and looking for connection online--though, as you'll see, there doesn't seem to be a correlation between high church attendance and lower internet usage.

The other headline is that Hispanic Catholics lag behind other religions in their degree of internet usage, at just 60%. Smith explains, "Since this survey included a Spanish-language option, language proficiency would appear to be driving that difference since English-language skills are a prime predictor of technology use." The main religious groupings in America break down this way:

White mainline Protestant: 82%
White evangelical Protestant: 73%
Black Protestant: 72%
All Catholic: 72%
White, non-Hispanic Catholic: 77%
Hispanic Catholic: 60%

When it comes to religiously-affilated people and internet usage, there's little difference between hard-core church-goers and casual attendees, Smith reports:

When we strip the unaffiliated out of the equation and look only at people who opted to select a present religion, regularity of church attendance actually isn’t correlated with internet usage in any significant way. Internet adoption is 72% for people who go to church once a week or more, 76% for those who go to church semi-regularly (once a month or a few times a year) and 75% for infrequent attendees (those who attend seldom or never). Those are all within the margin of error of the survey.

That same trend largely holds true when we compare different age groups within the “affiliated” cohort as well. Generally there is little if any variation in internet use based on frequency of church attendance (although note that we do start to run into some relatively small sample sizes with older age groups, so I’m not presenting those numbers in detail). But overall, while technology use varies pretty dramatically with age there isn’t a lot of internal change based on frequency of church attendance—for example, seniors who go to church often have about the same technology habits as seniors who go to church seldom, and the same is true for young adults as well.

Smith also says Pew's survey data doesn't show much variation in other kinds of technology ownership and usage by degree of church attendance.

Cell ownership (among adults who selected a current religion)
Attend weekly+: 75%
Attend monthly/yearly: 70%
Attend seldom/never: 71%

Use text messaging (among adults who selected a current religion)
Attend weekly+: 52%
Attend monthly/yearly: 59%
Attend seldom/never: 61%

Have a social networking site profile (among online adults who selected a current religion)
Attend weekly+: 50%
Attend monthly/yearly: 57%
Attend seldom/never: 53%

This data is based on a survey of 2,020 people (including cell phone sampling) conducted January 14-27, 2010.