Is religion missing out on social media factor?

A century or more down the line, our generation and time will be remembered as the age of social media revolution. In these times of social networking via web, nothing, and no one seem to be immune to this fever, not even religion.

When Pope Francis signed up for Instagram earlier this year, he became an overnight sensation, gaining 1 million followers on the social media service within 12 hours. Since then Pope’s popularity has witnessed an unabated growth. People around the world have liked, shared and commented on his posts, expanding the reach of a religion that's already practiced by more than 1 billion people.

Pope's online fame and following embody the promise of social media for religious communities. Faith groups can use sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to share their work and services with the world.

But one needs to be cautious with religion. According to a new research on technology and faith, published May 10 by Sociological Perspectives (paywall), social media's influence on religion isn't all positive. Young adults who use social media are 35 to 49 percent more likely to believe it's acceptable to pick and choose religious beliefs than non-users, precisely because they are exposed to feeds, tweets, and pictures that promote the most interesting aspects of other faiths.

Though not many studies have been conducted to determine their exact interaction, but according to social media experts, that should not stop faith communities to be more visible on the media platform.

Motivation

"To be relevant, churches have to constantly think about the people they want to reach and then, as (the theologian) John Wesley said, go to people where they are," says Douglas Cannon, a public relations professor who worked in communications for the United Methodist Church for 25 years.

According to Paul McClure, a doctoral candidate at Baylor University who authored the new study.

"Social media inclines people to pick and choose among a number of different things. Our likes and preferences are not guaranteed to be logically consistent and there's no expectation that they are."

For this reason, young adults who use social media are more open than their peers to "cafeteria-style" religious practice, in which spiritual seekers cobble together their own faith from their favorite pieces of global religions. His study used data from the National Study on Youth and Religion, analyzing three waves of interviews with more than 2,000 people at different stages of young adulthood.

Another finding from the research says that social media sites could weaken young people's ties to their family's faith. But then, they also enable religious communities to reach out to teenagers and young adults in meaningful new ways, Cannon says.

Some religious groups already recognize these possibilities. For example, Archbishop José Gómez of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles hired a team of nearly twenty personnel to boost the archdiocese's social media presence more than two years ago.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has also adopted effective social media strategies. Church members share pictures and stories online with hashtags like #ShareGoodness, and some active missionaries are allowed to post on Facebook about their experiences.

But there are other faith communities which continue to struggle to make sense of social media, in spite of these success stories, Cannon says. Mastering sites like Facebook takes energy and patience, and some groups aren't willing to invest in it.

Not an easy game

The first and the foremost thing to do is to figure out where to get started and how to build a following. It's easy to get burned out, especially when members of the congregation aren't invested in the project, Cannon adds.

"The average age in most United Methodist congregations is over 50," he notes.

Older generations are less likely to use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram than their younger counterparts, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Nearly 9 in 10 Internet users who are 18 to 29 years old (87 percent) use Facebook, compared to 73 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds and 63 percent of Internet users who are age 50 to 64.

And then it’s never easy to maintain the thin line between message and marketing. Faced with these varied challenges, many religious groups end up not doing enough online to attract young people and other new members.

According to Cannon, faith communities often struggle to promote their good works on social media for the right reasons. They might be too busy serving others to post a Facebook status or tweet a picture.

These congregations remind him of a church he once consulted with that delivered Thanksgiving dinners to low-income families. Leaders wanted to have a larger presence in their town, and yet the congregation hadn't thought to label these baskets of food with information about the service project, a Bible verse or even the name of the church.

"I said to the leaders, 'Why are you doing that?' If that's your motivation, say something," Cannon says.

He offers the same advice to religious leaders struggling to engage creatively with social media. They should embrace the opportunity to explain their church's mission in photo captions, event descriptions and anywhere else on social media sites, he concludes.