A recent study from Grey Matter Research and Consulting compiled statistics on how Americans use the internet for religious purposes.
“The sample of 1,011 online adults is accurate to within ±3.1 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level with a 50 percent response distribution.
“The study was conducted in all 50 states. Respondents’ age, education, household income, geography, racial/ethnic background, Internet use, and gender were carefully tracked and weighted to ensure appropriate representation and accuracy.”
This is one informative and interesting infographic!
What’s Up With Evangelicals?
I found it interesting that overall, Evangelicals claim to attend church more and use the Internet for more religious purposes. I’ve been trying to come up with a reason for that but I’ve got nothing.
Anyone have a hypothesis as to why this is?
I have some generalizations based on my own life experience with my family and friends but it is by no means backed by any known research or knowledge. Are Evangelicals more susceptible to the “Hawthorne Effect,” saying something because they know they are part of a study and they know this is what the “Christian world-view” expects of them?
[Click for Larger]
Thoughts?
[via iMinistries]
Tyler H says
it’s sad that we live in such a cynical society that we have to think the hawthorne effect is the answer…and not that people generally look up stuff online that they are interested in…so if evangelicals are interested in Jesus, is it all that surprising that they would look up stuff on church online?
Bryan Young says
Tyler,
Please don’t read this blog post as being cynical and that we are claiming that the “Hawthorne Effect” is the answer. It was simply a suggestion to hopefully start some discussion. I am genuinely interested in what pastors or others think as to why, according to this study, Catholics and Protestants are clearly not using their church’s website or the internet for social media as it relates to the church, as much as Evangelicals claim to.
From our perspective, and one of the reasons this is interesting to me, is that our company doesn’t have a lot of websites that we host for Catholic and Protestant churches. We also don’t have a lot of them knocking on our door for work. We do, however, host hundreds of websites for Evangelical churches and ministries. We don’t market our company to any one particular denomination. It’s something I’d definitely like to learn more about.
Paula Whidden says
What a fascinating infographic. Makes one think that the website isn’t the outreach we’d hope it would be. I wish there was an infographic on how people do religious searches and discussions on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. There are a ton of Bible verses on Pinterest.
Will you be making something like this soon?
Bryan Young says
Paula,
If I could find a place that has put together statics or done some research on what you are suggesting, an infographic would be great and we would create it for sure.
We did post two recent articles on here that you may be able to get some info from. They have some valuable info on social media and how that relates to your online presence.
https://churchm.ag/church-websites-should-tell-a-story/
https://churchm.ag/what-makes-a-healthy-online-presence-for-churches/
Paula Whidden says
I plan on reading these, thanks.
John Hughes says
I think if we were able to correlate the predominant age groups amongst the areas tested we might find some interesting parallels. It could be that the most predominant users in this study(evangelicals) also fall in the under 35 age category as well. It is no secret that the fastest growing churches are what would be considered evangelical and it would also be likely that those growing churches are attracting the more predominant users of the internet. A large section of denominations are seeing a decline in the young adult demographic because of their chains of tradition and inability to evolve their delivery methods of their message.
Bryan Young says
You are right that age groups may play a significant role in what we are seeing in these statistics. Do you know of any studies that outline what the average age of member or attendees are at churches based on denomination? I would think, based on my experience that a Catholic church will have a higher average age.
If you look at the original article by Grey Matter, they do break down some of the research by age. Interestingly, when asked if they have visited the website of a church or place of worship they attend in the last 30 days, only 8% under 35 had done so while all other age groups above that were at 12%-13%. Beyond that, the stats are all over the place for time of last visit and if they have visited a website. I would guess this is partly due to just not remembering. It’s real easy to remember what you’ve done in the last 30 days. You do see that more people under the age of 35 claim to not attend church than any other age group. That is a statistic that shouldn’t be overlooked either.