A recent study shows preference for religion is declining, and its decline may be partly caused by the Internet.
Allen Downey, a professor of computer science at Olin College of Engineering, in Massachusetts, used statistical methods with data from the Higher Education Research Institute and the National Opinion Research Center in his research on the decline of religious preference.
In his research, Downey isolated Internet use as one of several factors contributing to religious disaffiliation.
“People who reported a few hours a week of Internet use were less likely to report a religious preference, by about two percentage points,” he wrote in an email.
He added that people who use the Internet more than seven hours per week were less religious by an additional three percentage points. The total decrease in religious affiliation between 1980 and 2010 was about 25 million people, he said.
Downey speculated the Internet is contributing to the decline of religion by allowing more access to information and more communication among people with different beliefs.
People with religious doubt are able to access other people in similar circumstances all over the world via websites such as Reddit, he said.
David Hackett, a UF associate professor of religion, said the research might reflect what is happening to organized religion but not to spirituality.
“The number of people who go to church, synagogue or some sort of formal participation in organized worship has certainly decreased in recent years,” he said. “On the other side, there has been an increase in what people are calling spirituality.”
Hackett said the Internet is probably contributing to a decrease in organized religion by causing people to disconnect with each other.
Hackett sees a continued decline of organized religion in years to come but an increase in individualized religion and spirituality.
“Religion is going to be very individualized,” he said. “Spirituality is going to be far more triumphant than organized religion.”
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 4/21/2014 under the headline "Study: Internet users more likely to be religiously unaffiliated"]
