How Youth engage with religion, what's changing?
This page and the next correspond with the first prediction of my podcast: Religion will cease to function as an inhibitor of drug consumption in teenagers in America in the next 5 years.
To evaluate this possibility two things need to be analyzed.
1. Does religion function as an inhibitor of drugs? If so why?
2. What is the current perception towards religion held by teenagers?
The first question is answered by the following artifact. This article works towards checking the validity of research which has concluded that religion protects youth from engaging with drugs or other defiant acts. It comes to Conesus with this point through its own empirical evidence, however, it builds on why this serves to be the case.
Artifact #2: The article ‘Religious Involvement And Drug Use Among Urban Adolescents’ by C. Kirk Hadaway, Kirk W. Elifson, and David M. Petersen states:
“…religion alone does not appear to be of great significance. So many other moral pressures are in effect from parents, peers, school, and other societal influences that the additional influence of religion tends to be lost.”
In other words, it isn't religious moral teaching keeping teenagers from acting in defiance, but the pressures of parents, teachers, peers, and church leaders put on teenagers to act according to their moral teachings. This fits the definition of tightness and looseness I established on the first page.
The article goes on to explain that this means the hold religion has on teenagers is only as good if there is no societal consensus. This is where my prediction fits in if there is social looseness towards drug consumption then teenagers will not make their choice to partake in drugs based on the tighter pressure of the church. The next page works on building this argument.
Artifact #3: This artifact comes from a survey taken by the Pew Research Center on the religiosity of teens in comparison to their parents. It answers the second question I posed above, how have perceptions of religion shifted in the minds of teenagers? The percentages here show that teenagers attend church about as frequently as their parents do but engage less with traditionally religious acts. This further adds to why religion will cease to protect youth from engaging in drugs because they already show they are less influenced to do as they are expected to by the church. This also points us to the direction teenagers seem to be taking in their approach to religion as being a more individualistic one, where they attend church but then pursue religion through the acts they see as fit.