AUGUST 4, 2003

CULTURE
Teens, the Internet and faith: Let's talk

Now that the Internet has become an essential part of teen social life, researchers are asking specific questions about what they're talking about online and why. One hot topic in discussion forums, emails and instant messages: faith and spirituality. Studies have shown that more adults are going online for information about religion. Now researchers, religious leaders and parents are exploring the ways teens connect with others, use vast arrays of information, and question or accept authority - all things that may shape their beliefs, values and participation in faith and civic groups in adulthood. These issues are particularly pressing in light of a new study that found that teens and young adults spend more time online than watching TV.

Questions for reporters
• What are teens in your area talking about online? Are they seeking information about faith? Or are they already religiously committed and taking advantage of new online opportunities that savvy faith groups are developing on the Web?
•Are they talking with people halfway across the country or world who share their beliefs, or are they being exposed to different belief systems?
•What do local youth workers say is helping them catch teens' attention? Do youth workers have concerns about misinformation?
•What do youth workers and teens say is different about what they can do online and what they can do in person?
•How much do teens rely on their peers, rather than dogma or institutional authority, in checking out information?
•As they plan their programs, how much, if any, are youth workers concerned about the "digital divide" between those who have Internet access and those who don't? (This Corporation for Public Broadcasting report says the divide is shrinking but still exists even as more African-American youth go online.)
•Books written when the Internet first came on the scene made lots of predictions about the ways it would revolutionize how religion is practiced. For youth workers, who have had to adapt quickly in order to reach teens, how has the experience of using the Internet to work with teens changed their hopes and fears about what it can do?
•Since using new communications technology involves many trials and errors, have any online efforts failed?

Why it Matters
Most young people regard the Internet as an essential tool on their journey to adulthood. Religion is another such tool, an embodiment of beliefs and traditions of the society that young people are taking their place in. All new technologies bring about social fears and exaggerations at their outset, and the vulnerability of the young makes adults especially nervous about this heady mix of varied beliefs; powerful, unregulated new technology; and credulous young people. Beyond the hype of novelty and fears about undue influence, how many, and what kinds of, changes are beginning to take hold?

Skip to background

Click the map for interview sources in your state and region

National sources

• Lynn Schofield Clark is author of From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media and the Supernatural (Oxford University Press, 2003) and director of the Teens and the New Media @ Home project at the University of Colorado. She is working with focus groups of teens to learn how they use the Internet to explore religion. She says that teens tend to look to their peers to evaluate whether something is true and that, like their parents, they regard themselves - rather than dogma or institution - as ultimate authority in religious matters. Contact 303-278-4171, lynn.clark@colorado.edu.
• Brenda Brasher, a sociologist of religion at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, wrote Give Me That Online Religion (Jossey-Bass, 2001), a new edition of which is due out next year. She says trendy youth Internet activity with religious dimensions includes online dating based on religious preference and blogging. Contact b.brasher@abdn.ac.uk.
• Mike Atkinson is Internet director of Youth Specialties, which serves a wide variety of Catholic and Protestant youth workers and publishes Youthworker magazine. He says teens are living on the Internet right now and have "amazing community" there. Contact 619-440-2333, Mikey@youthspecialties.com.
• Michelle Cove is directing a teen initiative at Jewish Family & Life!, which publishes a number of webzines and recently conducted focus group research with Jewish teens. Contact 617-581-6821, mcove@jflmedia.com.
• Frank Mercadante is executive director of Cultivation Ministries, which works with Roman Catholic churches to develop youth ministries. Contact 630-513-8222, frank@cultivationministries.com.
• J.R.Whitby is director of Gospelcom.net, which hosts 260 online ministries and has been doing online work since 1995. He says most individual congregations are too small to have a significant online presence. Gospelcom.net includes a youth section, christianstudents.com, a message board forum for teens that is an outgrowth of wwjd.com, the online version of the "What Would Jesus Do?" movement. Contact 231-773-3361, jrw@gospelcom.net.
• Jess Elmquist is president and founder of Truewell, which specializes in youth online ministries that promote community. Contact 1-800-919-TRUE, jess@truewell.com.
• Quentin Schultze is a communications professor at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., who has written extensively on the Internet and Christianity. His most recent book is Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age (Baker, 2002). He told Youthworker magazine in a 2000 interview that the interactivity of the Internet made it a peer-oriented youth culture. Contact 616-526-6290.
• Ellen Dugan is author of Elements of Witchcraft: Natural Magick for Teens (Llewellyn, 2003), an introductory guide for teen and middle-school readers on Wicca. Contact ellendugan313@yahoo.com. Though designed for older practitioners, teens also use witchvox.com, which has a state-by-state and country-by-country listing of groups for young pagans.
• Soundvision.com is a web-based resource for Muslims. Its teen section is the most active part, with message boards. Founder and president Malik Mujahid says the site gets 10 million hits monthly, and he estimates that two-thirds of the visitors are young people. He says they are mostly concerned with Muslim lifestyle questions and with discrimination and cultural relations issues. Contact 708-430-1255, ext. 405.
• Andrew Careaga is a youth worker who has written three books about the Internet and ministry, including eMinistry: Connecting with the Net Generation (Kregel, 2001). He says teens are using major web portals such as Yahoo! to get to discussion forums rather than using religiously sponsored forums. Contact 573-341-4183, Andrew@kregel.com.
• Josue Sanchez is a Canadian pastor and founder of JustSmile Ministries, a new and growing online Christian ministry that includes teens on its staff and offers talk forums in English, French and Spanish. Contact josue@justsmile.org.

Background

• A July 24, 2003, USA Today article about a study of teen and young adult online activity. The marketing study, commissioned by Yahoo! and Carat North America, showed that the Internet is youths' preferred medium.
• The National Study of Youth & Religion, based at the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, offers a resource page with links to many studies on youth and religion. Contact 919-918-5294, youthandreligion@unc.edu.
• Barna Research Group, which tracks faith and values trends, reported that teen use of the Internet for spiritual or religious experience grew by 200 percent in three years' time (1998-2000) and that 46 percent of teens expected to use the Internet to talk about faith. See Real Teens: A Contemporary Snapshot of Youth Culture (Regal Books, 2001).
• Ongoing series of surveys by the Pew Internet and American Life Project tracking the online behavior of adults show that 29 percent of users 18 and older have looked for spiritual or religious information online in 2003.
• "Teenage Life Online," a comprehensive 2001 Pew Internet and American Life survey of teens and the Internet, measured different uses of the Internet, with email and surfing for fun the most popular. (No questions were asked specifically about religion.)
• A 2003 Corporation for Public Broadcasting survey connected showed that almost two-thirds of children between the ages of 2 and 17 used the Internet in 2002.
• This 2001 survey by the Pew Internet and American Life project concentrated on adult religious "surfing" and online activities involving religion.
• This 2000 survey by the Pew Internet and American Life project of 1,300 U.S. congregations summarized how wired congregations were and noted eagerness to provide features for youth.
• A spring 2002 article in the Journal of Youth Ministry notes that little research is available to quantify how youth use the Internet for spiritual information, even though that use is clearly growing.
• Check out some of the wide-ranging and active web sites where teens talk about religion: multifaith Beliefnet and JustSmile Ministries, a growing evangelical Christian site which offers advice and a talk forum in English, Spanish and French.
• See links to the youth divisions of many religious denominations.