{"id":783,"date":"2014-04-06T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-06T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/04\/new-study-says-internet-could-be-why-americans-are-losing-their-religion.html"},"modified":"2014-04-06T15:30:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-06T15:30:00","slug":"new-study-says-internet-could-be-why-americans-are-losing-their-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/04\/new-study-says-internet-could-be-why-americans-are-losing-their-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"New study says Internet could be why Americans are losing their religion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
New research from Allen Downey, a computer scientist at\u00a0Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, shows a startling correlation between the rise of the Internet and the decline of religious affiliation in the United States.<\/span><\/div>\n
According to\u00a0MIT Technology Review<\/a>, back in 1990 only eight percent of the U.S. population did not have a religious affiliation. Twenty years later in 2010 that number was up to 18 percent. That is a jump of 25 million people. Americans seem to be losing their religion, and from Downey\u2019s research we may have an answer.<\/span><\/div>\n
The data Downey looked at is from the General Social Survey, which according to MIT Technology Review is \u201ca widely respected sociological survey carried out by the University of Chicago.\u201d Since 1972, the survey has been measuring the population\u2019s demographics and attitudes.<\/span><\/div>\n
The approach to looking at the survey material was to see how socioeconomic status, education, religious upbringing and other factors\u00a0correlated<\/em>\u00a0with the drop in religious affiliation. This is a good time to talk about the difference between correlation and causation. The data from the survey shows a relationship between these factors and decreased religious affiliation, but not direct causation.<\/span><\/div>\n
Downey\u2019s findings show that religious upbringing is the largest influence on religious affiliation. However a drop in religious upbringing starting in 1990, does not account for the entire drop of religious affiliation. According to the analysis, religious upbringing was important, but only explicated 25 percent of the drop.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New research from Allen Downey, a computer scientist at\u00a0Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, shows a startling correlation between the rise of the Internet and the decline of religious affiliation in the United States. According to\u00a0MIT Technology Review, back in 1990 only eight percent of the U.S. population did not have a religious affiliation. Twenty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nNew study says Internet could be why Americans are losing their religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"New research from Allen Downey, a computer scientist at Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, shows a startling correlation between the rise\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/04\/new-study-says-internet-could-be-why-americans-are-losing-their-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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