Why didn’t Generation X leave the church while the Millennials are leaving in droves? Richard Beck thinks it has something to do with social media tools:
The difference between Generations X and Y isn’t in their views of the church. It’s about those cellphones. It’s about relationships and connectivity. Most Gen X’ers didn’t have cell phones, text messaging or Facebook. These things were creeping in during their college years but the explosive onset of mobile devices and social computing had yet to truly take off.
So why has mobile social computing affected church attendance? Well, if church has always been kind of lame and irritating why did people go in the first place? Easy, social relationships. Church has always been about social affiliation. You met your friends, discussed your week, talked football, shared information about good schools, talked local politics, got the scoop, and made social plans (“Let’s get together for dinner this week!”). Even if you hated church you could feel lonely without it. Particularly with the loss of “third places” in America.
But Millennials are in a different social situation. They don’t need physical locations for social affiliation. They can make dinner plans via text, cell phone call or Facebook. In short, the thing that kept young people going to church, despite their irritations, has been effectively replaced. You don’t need to go to church to stay connected or in touch. You have an iPhone.
(Via: Jesus Creed)
February 15th, 2011 | 10:29 am
Odd. About a third of my Facebook Friends are from my Parish.
February 15th, 2011 | 11:10 am
I was thinking the same thing, Mike, but I think what’s being said is that for people who don’t have another good reason to remain in the church, Facebook removes what might be the last reason for some people — the social connection. It’s similar to the argument that’s made against importing excessive amounts of popular culture and practice into the church — why should I get up on Sunday morning to do that, when they do it better on TV or at the movies or at the local sports pub anyway?
I suppose there’s some plausibility to that, but I remain suspicious of the gigabytes of stuff being written about how Facebook is a dominant factor in this or that aspect of our society.
February 15th, 2011 | 11:57 am
I don’t think it’s true that Gen X-ers didn’t leave the Church. Their church attendance or self-identification might not have reflected the trend, but for all practical purposes they left. I can only speak to my own experience, but without fail it seems that those young people who continue to be religious have parents who were authentically religious. The young people whose parents didn’t attend mass, whose parents didn’t pray at home, and whose parents lived lives contrary to Christian teaching have left the Church. They might have been sent to confirmation class, they might have gone to Vacation Bible School, they might have gone to church on Easter, Christmas, and sporadically throughout the year, but they weren’t Christian in the sense that they accepted the authority of Christian doctrine and their parents didn’t either.
In fact, it is my own belief that the “Greatest Generation” gets a pass here. Between my mother’s family, my father’s family, and my step-mother’s family, there were fifteen children raised Catholic. How many would even identify themselves practicing Catholics today? Two. Their mothers were all devout women. Although my paternal grandmother was English and an Anglican, she took her children to Catholic Mass as she promised to raise them Catholic upon marrying my grandfather. The fathers, however, were heterodox at best, agnostic at worst (though all were otherwise upstanding men and I love and admire them greatly). Aspects of cultural Catholicism filtered down through the first generation-their children, but by the time it reached my millenial generation there was nothing left. The roots of my generation’s loss of faith, at least within my own family, can be traced to the Greatest Generation. It has nothing to do with Facebook, which, if you buy what the media and other commentators on society have to say, has supplanted alcohol as the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.
February 15th, 2011 | 1:02 pm
There’s no statistical evidence offered to show that the Millennial generation is more irreligious than Generation X. If Millennials aren’t going to church as much (I’m 23, a part of this age cohort) its because of the ever increasing age of marriage and having your first child. Generally, people quit going to church in college and young adulthood, some come back when they get married, and a whole lot come back when they are parents. If Gen X is more religious than my age group, its because we’re behind the age curve.
Stuart’s comment is very wise. The best predictor of whether religion will take in a child is if their parents sincerely believe in it. That is not the same thing as externally practicing, but having no impact inside the house. And Stuart sees that there is something wrong with the Greatest Generation that we either don’t realize or choose to ignore. If we complain about the Baby Boomers, we would be wise to ask ourselves how they turned out that way.
February 15th, 2011 | 1:54 pm
I think I agree with pentamom as to the argument being made. Still, I find it a strange argument. I would think that people who spend a lot of time on Facebook would also spend a lot of time with their friends. I wonder what the statistics would say. I find that it’s true for the young’uns I know. Mind you, I’m old enough that anyone under 40 seems young.
I still get the argument that computer games make boys anti-social. Being very aware of the inter connectivity in gaming (it’s standard on hand-helds), I find that argument empty as well.
February 15th, 2011 | 2:53 pm
Mike, I think you make a good point. In my experience, the people who are overly socially dependent on things like Facebook *were introverts anyway.* And for some us introverts who seek a better balance, Facebook is a more accessible means of social interaction — while being withdrawn is never justifiable, something like social networking can actually draw us *into* relationships more easily than if we could only form them by that desperately difficult (for us) thing called face to face interaction.
It’s bad if it’s a substitute for real social interaction, but the fact that it doesn’t have to be a substitute, and isn’t actually a substitute for all but a small minority who probably wouldn’t have been all that successful in real world interaction anyway, is one of the chief reasons I’m loathe to credit any of this endless “Facebook has changed this or that aspect of society” talk.
February 15th, 2011 | 4:51 pm
This possibility is just another reason I’m glad I finally realized church isn’t about socializing. I know now that I go for the body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ in the Eucharist.
February 15th, 2011 | 6:58 pm
It’s easy to either over- or under-emphasize the impact of social networking, among other technologies. And “social networking” is still an evolving phenomenon, like so much related to the Web.
Professor Beck is being deliberately provocative, I think (another Web phenomenon), making his conclusiong — “Facebook killed the Church” — his headline, that is, the beginning of his blogpost.
He asks “So why has mobile social computing affected church attendance?” but doesn’t really spend any time justifying the question — there’s no real evidence cited that it’s “social computing” that’s affected church attendance.” Or that it’s social computing alone that’s affected attendance.
But Abilene Christian University is one of the few institutions that’s put mobile computing and wireless networking at the center of a comprehensive, systematic effort at studying how these technologies are affecting not just learning at ACU, but life.
His statement that for the older generation the “church WAS Facebook” is worth thinking about: it goes beyond church as a concept, or an idea, or a set of theological propositions. More than some of the comments here, Beck’s statement reminds us that the New Testament, and Tradition, describe the church as the body of Christ: something inherently relational, as the Mass (speaking as a Catholic) affirms and makes real.
I think Beck is correct: the church *is* ‘social relationships’ understood in that full, Gospel context.
I also think his early observation — “In short, Facebook isn’t replacing real world relationality. Rather, Facebook tends to reflect our social world.” — is correct.
One can make the case that the “social world” isn’t much of a world, or is dysfunctional or shallow or trivial. Yet if the church’s relationship with the cell phone generation doesn’t take seriously the exigencies of their experience, then they’ll likely continue their exodus.
The “solution” isn’t adopting or experimenting with mobile technology in the church. It’s in understanding what the use of that technology shows about those who are using it, about the absence of the church’s voice in the realm where they’re listening.
February 20th, 2011 | 1:41 am
[...] social purpose as churches – has recently been rehashed on a few highly trafficked blogs like First Things, Jesus Creed at Patheos.com and The Lookout, a Yahoo blog, among others. It’s not clear why [...]
March 5th, 2011 | 2:18 pm
[...] few weeks ago, First Thoughts pointed me to this blog post by Richard Beck at Experimental Theology called “How Facebook [...]
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