ABSTRACT
Social networking or “social network” sites (SNS) are an increasingly popular topic of study for scholars in the social sciences. Although the influence of religion in the lives of emerging adults has been studied, its impact on the new realm of SNS has been understudied. This chapter examines whether religious identity and practice influence SNS behavior or whether these factors can be explained away by social behavior related to and fostered by religion. Denominations, and the broad historical traditions to which they belong, have been found to be an important source of variation in outcomes in social science research on religion. Compared with the not religious, Catholic emerging adults are nearly twice as likely to belong to a SNS and those whose religion could not be determined and those who belonged to non-Christian and non-Jewish faiths were significantly less likely to belong to a SNS.
