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Your peers say WHAT?
By Jim Coggins
“I am filled with hope,” writes
sociologist Reginald Bibby. The reason? “Teens in Canada are still
mostly morally healthy, decent folks whom you would want as a
neighbour.”
This is one of the more encouraging findings in
Bibby’s new book, The Emerging
Millennials: How Canada’s Newest Generation is Responding to Change
& Choice.
Bibby is one of the most respected sociologists in
Canada, known for his in-depth surveys of Canadian youth. His career has
been focused on finding out what teens actually think. His latest survey,
of 4,746 high school students aged 15 – 19, was conducted in 2008.
Friendship & freedom
Asked what they found “very important,”
the Millennials in this latest survey responded emphatically: friendship
(86 percent) and freedom (85 percent). These values rated higher than a
comfortable life (75 percent), a good education (73 percent), success (73
percent), family life (67 percent), money (44 percent), looks
(40 percent) and popularity (16
percent). They also ranked much higher than did spirituality
(27 percent) and involvement in a religious group (13
percent).
Along with these values, Millennials also demonstrated
that they hold a number of “traditional” moral values.
Eighty-four percent said trust is “very important,” and 81
percent said honesty is. Millennials also value humour (75 percent),
concern for others (65 percent), politeness (64 percent), forgiveness (60
percent) and working hard (55 percent).
Relativism rules
Nonetheless, almost two-thirds of Millennials said
that “What’s right or wrong is a matter of personal
opinion.” When asked what they based their own moral values on, 43
percent said “how I feel at the time,” and seven percent said
“a personal decision.” Sixteen percent cited their
parents’ views, three percent said their friends, and only 10 percent
based their moral decisions on “religion” – slightly
below the 12 percent who said their moral views were based on
“nothing.”
“Where the relativism comes in,” Bibby
writes, “is not with respect to the value itself, but in how it is
applied.” Eighty-one percent of Millennials valued honesty, which is
not far off the 95 percent of those born before 1946 who value honesty.
However, when the Millennials were asked what they would do if they were
walking away from a sales counter and realized the salesperson had given
them $10 more than they were supposed to receive, only 38 percent said they
would return the money (compared to 90 percent of those born before 1946).
On the other hand, this does not mean Millennials are
not acting morally. In fact, the April 13 issue of Maclean’s magazine was so
impressed by some of Bibby’s findings that it dubbed Millennials
“the tame generation.” From 2000 to 2008, the percentage of
teens who drink alcohol declined from 78 percent to 71 percent, the
percentage who smoke dropped from 37 percent to 22 percent, the percentage
who use marijuana or hashish dropped from 37 percent to 31 percent, and the
percentage who never have sex rose from 51 percent to 56 percent. In fact,
teens are having sex less frequently than seniors.
Teens have not fully embraced traditional values, of
course. Seventy-two percent of Millennials said they approved of sex before
marriage “when people love each other”; but that is down from
82 percent in 2000 and 87 percent in 1992. Similarly, 44 percent approve
and accept homosexual relations; and another 28 percent disapprove, but
accept them. However, that level is actually lower than the approval rate
among Baby Boomers (born 1946 – 1965).
Bibby suggests Millennials’ moral values may be
partly the result of lingering religious teaching: “God and religious
groups may have eclipsed somewhat from their lives, but they have left huge
shadows.”
Who needs organized religion?
Millennials have inherited trends established by their
grandparents and their parents – particularly a trend away from
organized religion.
In the 1950s, more than 60 percent of Canadians
attended a Christian church weekly. In the 21st century, less than 30
percent do. Conservative Protestants (evangelicals, Baptists, Pentecostals,
Mennonites, Christian Reformed, etc.) have held steady at about eight
percent of the population; but there have been very significant declines
among mainline Protestants (United, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans),
and Roman Catholics.
However, while many older Canadians “indicate
that they have little use for organized religion,” many “are
quick to say that they are spiritual or interested in spirituality.”
Put another way: while organized religion has been declining among Boomers
and post-Boomers, “God has continued to do well in the polls.”
Even though they rarely attend church, many
Canadians have continued to identify with a Christian church and to say
they believe in God.
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Theistic comeback?
It might have been expected that organized religion
would continue to decline among Millennials. “However, this downward
spiral . . . is showing signs of ending,” Bibby says. “A
theistic comeback could be in the works.”
Monthly church attendance by teens “has remained
stable”– in fact, it has increased slightly from 32 percent in
1992 to 33 percent in 2008. Moreover, Bibby says, “the majority of
Canadian teenagers who are actively involved in religious groups are
claiming that their involvement is both important and gratifying.”
While only 13 percent of Millennials said religion is
“very important,” 68 percent of Millennials who attend church
at least monthly said that involvement is “important.” And 59
percent of those who attend monthly said they are receiving a high level of
enjoyment from their involvement. This level of enjoyment is markedly
higher than a generation ago, and even rises to 75 percent among
conservative Protestants.
A growing chasm
On the other hand, there seems to be a “growing
polarization between teenagers who are actively involved in religious
groups and those who are not.”
Since 1984, the proportion of teenagers who never
attended services has risen from 28 percent to 47 percent. Furthermore,
among this group, God is no longer “doing well in the polls.”
While two-thirds of Millennials are convinced God exists, agnosticism and
atheism are significant: 16 percent are convinced God does not exist; and
17 percent “don’t think so.”
This is taking the previous trend to the next stage.
While Boomers and their children tended to move “from decisiveness
about belief in God to tentative belief or increasing agnosticism,”
Millennials are moving “from tentativeness to agnosticism, and from
agnosticism to atheism.”
This does not mean Millennials are closed to the idea
of God and church. In 2000, 37 percent of teens attending church less than
once a month and 58 percent of those attending once a month or more said,
“I’d be open to more involvement with religious groups, if I
found it to be worthwhile.” In 2008, those figures had risen to 38
percent and 62 percent.
Looked at another way, “Most Canadian teens
still want God and church around for the most important occasions in their
lives,” says Ron Rolheiser, a Roman Catholic priest and one of two
commentators asked to reflect on Bibby’s findings within the book.
Eighty-four percent of Millennials still want a religious wedding, 83
percent want a religious funeral, and 65 percent some kind of religious
rites for their children (such as baptism or child dedication).
Faith inspires goodness
People “can be good without God,” Bibby
concedes. But his findings reveal that Millennials with a definite belief
in God “are consistently more likely than teens who hold an atheistic
position to place a high value on traits such as trust, honesty, concern
for others and working hard.”
The reason, Bibby says, is obvious: “Ideas
invariably have social origins. They don’t arise out of nowhere, nor
do they typically originate with creative individuals. Rather, for the most
part, they are learned from other people – parents, friends,
teachers, authors, television, the Internet and so on.”
One of Bibby’s findings is that 95 percent of
Millennials who definitely believe in God also believe this supreme being
“expects us to be good to one another.”
Rolheiser suggests there is a price to be paid
“once we no longer drink very directly from the waters of faith and
religion.”
However, Bibby maintains, that particular well is far
from dry. “In our current survey, the topic that easily received the
most write-in comments from teenagers was religion,” he said.
“If religion doesn’t matter, why does it matter so
much?”
The Emerging Millennials is
available at bookstores across Canada. More information about Reginald
Bibby’s work with Project Teen Canada can be found at:
reginaldbibby.com.
Options Spring 2009
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