64% Of Wired Americans Use Internet For Spiritual Or Religious Purposes.
March 13, 2003
64% of the nation’s 128 million Internet users have done things online that relate to religious or spiritual matters.
Nearly two-thirds of the adults who use the Internet in the United States have used the Internet for faith-related matters. That represents nearly 82 million Americans. Among the most popular and important spiritually-related online activities:
38% of the 128 million Internet users have sent and received email with spiritual content.
35% have sent or received online greeting cards related to religious holidays.
32% have gone online to read news accounts of religious events and affairs.
21% have sought information about how to celebrate religious holidays.
17% have looked for information about where they could attend religious services.
This figure represents a substantially higher number of online religious faith seekers than the Pew Internet & American Life Project has measured before. We used a new battery of questions to prompt Internet users’ recollections of the things they do online related to spiritual activities.
Those who use the Internet for religious or spiritual purposes are more likely to be women, white, middle aged, college educated, and relatively well-to-do.
The online faithful are somewhat more active as Internet users than the rest of the Internet population. On a typical day, 63% of them are online. Some 56% of them have been online for six years or longer. And 60% have broadband connections somewhere in their life (at home or at work), compared to 54% of all Internet users.
55% of the online faithful are women, compared to the overall Internet population, which is 50-50 in its gender composition.
83% are white, compared to the overall Internet population, which is 75% white.
49% have college educations, compared to 36% of the entire Internet population.
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