A barrage of studies suggests the United States is growing more secular with time, and youth are leading the way. College students and Millennials are particularly underchurched: In 1970, about 12 percent of college students said they never attended religious services. Now that number’s up to 27 percent.
Researcher Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego University, believes some of this gravitation away from religion can be explained by the generation’s embrace of individualism. While Millennials still like to belong to a community—a yearning for which religion often provided the salve—they’re more often turning to social networks to fill that need rather than a traditional church. (Quartz)