ABSTRACT
It may come as no surprise that religion is a very popular topic on social networking sites. In fact, in 2009 on MySpace.com, which was the most prominent social networking site before Facebook arrived on the scene, Jesus Christ was mentioned as an interest in three times more profi les than was Britney Spears, and Buddhism was equally as trendy as the pop singer. MySpace featured a great deal of information about people’s spirituality when I examined the data in over a million profi les in 2009 and happily for the sake of comparison, a major survey of religion in America conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (2007) had just a few years earlier also produced valuable data about the religious affi liations of Americans across the country. Interestingly enough, the data from the offl ine survey matched almost exactly the data that could be found on MySpace. For instance, the percentage of MySpace users in America who wrote that they were Catholic was virtually the same as those who told the Pew survey they were Catholic. Likewise for Jews, Hindus, and most other religions. However, one religion was cited in more than two and a half times as many MySpace profi les as one would expect based on the Pew survey results. That religion was Buddhism.
