According to the Daily Mail today, America's teenagers are the least religious group in history. Click here for the full article.
Religion and faith is having less of an influence on people's lives, especially the young, according to new research. The US study claims that millennials - recent teenagers - are the least religious generation of the last six decades and possibly in the nation’s history.It said recent adolescents are less likely to say that religion is important in their lives and spend less time praying or meditating - and future generations are likely be even less religious.Researchers led by psychology professor Jean Twenge from San Diego State University analysed data from 11.2 million respondents from four nationally representative surveys of US adolescents aged 13 to 18 taken between 1966 and 2014. They found that millennials, also known as Generation Y, are less likely to belong to a religious group, or say that faith plays an important role in their daily lives.‘Unlike previous studies, ours is able to show that millennials’ lower religious involvement is due to cultural change, not to millennials being young and unsettled,’ said Professor Twenge, who is also the author of Generation Me.‘Millennial adolescents are less religious than Boomers and GenX’ers were at the same age.‘We also looked at younger ages than the previous studies. More of today’s adolescents are abandoning religion before they reach adulthood, with an increasing number not raised with religion at all.’