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Barna research findings about young Christians abandoning church are included in a new book by David Kinnaman (@davidkinnaman) titled You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith.

The research project was comprised of 8 national studies, including interviews with teenagers, young adults, parents, youth pastors, and senior pastors. The study of young adults focused on those who were regular churchgoers Christian church during their teen years and explored their reasons for disconnection from church life after age 15.

No single reason dominated the break-up between church and young adults. Instead, a variety of reasons emerged. Overall, the research uncovered 6 significant themes why nearly 3 out of every 5 young Christians (59%) disconnect either permanently or for an extended period of time from church life after age 15:

·         Churches seem overprotective.

·         Teens’ and twentysomethings’ experience of Christianity is shallow.

·         Churches come across as antagonistic to science.

·         Young Christians’ church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental.

·         They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity.

·         The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt.

Read this in full.

About 83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. According to the Pew Internet (@pewinternet) project, people in the 18-24 year-old range are sending and receiving 110 texts per day on average (3200 texts per month). The typical user in that age group sends or receives 50 messages per day (1500 per month). (Chart of the Day (@ChartOfTheDay) illustrates the data above.) The overall average for texting per day among all cell phone users is 42, says Pew. That number is flat on a year over year basis.

Read the report in full.

How does this information influence your marketing strategy?

Sam S. Rainer III writes in Leadership Journal (@Leadership_Jnl) that Millennials, those born between 1980 and 2000, “are America’s most educated generation, most diverse generation, and surprisingly, America’s largest generation. And they are beginning to get married, enter the workforce, and lead the world.”

This generation is hopeful. In fact, 96% of them agree with the statement, “I believe I can do something great.” But the majority says individual prominence is secondary to helping the community and accomplishing things for the greater good.

Yet this hopeful generation lacks a solid spiritual foundation on which to base their hopes. As few as one in four attend church weekly. Nearly two-thirds never attend religious services. Church leaders face unique challenges in reaching them.

Older generations tended to place a higher priority on church activity and attendance. The younger generation, however, demands to know the purpose behind each activity. For Millennials, just attending church does not equal faithfulness. The only way they'll attend is if they see the church as being a meaningful part of their lives.

Read this in full.

Adweek (@Adweek) says, “Call them the FB generation.” They consider technology a sixth sense.

McCann Worldgroup’s (@mccann_wg) newly completed global survey “The Truth About Youth,” which polled 16-to-30-year-olds, concludes that millennials live in a new “social economy” in which the power of sharing and recommending brands cannot be overstated. (Past generations defined themselves by material possessions or experiences.)

This group, according to the study, lives outloud, emphasizing public self-definition, life narration, and broadcasting via blogging platforms, digital cameras, and cheap editing and design software.

In the words of one study respondent: “If there are no pics, it didn’t happen.”

The agency’s takeaway: Brands should follow the top 5 traits young people say they look for in their social friends. Advertising should be truthful, genuine, sociable, mature, and humble to connect.

The biggest mistake marketers make? Overestimating their own importance. Young consumers say they quickly tire of brands that clutter up digital feeds with what they see as useless information.

Read the report in full.

Also see ClickZ’s (@ClickZ) coverage by Anna Maria Virzi (@AnnaMariaVirzi), “Study: Millennials Value ‘Social Economy.’”

Another study of millennials, this one by Public Religion Research Institute (@publicreligion) and reported by RNS (@ReligionNewsNow), says a significant majority of that age group believe it’s permissible to disagree with their church teachings on abortion and homosexuality and still remain in good standing with their faith. They’re “committed to availability, conflicted about morality.”

Read the report in full.

Let Somersault help you research your market.

Publishing’s competitors are not only other books vying for consumers’ time and attention. Average Americans have increased their TV watching by 2 minutes, to 34 hours, 39 minutes per week, according to State of the Media, Trends in TV Viewing—2011 TV Upfronts (pdf) from The Nielsen Company.

Heaviest TV watchers are adults 65+ (47 hours, 33 minutes per week), followed by 50-64 (43 hours, per week). Trailing all other age groups, teens age 12-17 watch the least amount of TV (23 hours, 41 minutes per week).

Emerging trends:

·       Timeshifting continues to be a significant factor in how consumers watch TV. 38% of all TV households in the USA have a DVR.

·         Mobile Video viewing has increased 41% from last year. The heaviest users of mobile video are teens ages 12-17 who watch 7 hours 13 minutes of mobile video a month.

·         Viewing video online also continues to increase. In January 2011, 144 million Americans viewed video online.

·        The audience overlap between visitors to network and broadcast media sites and social networking & blog sites is significant. In January 2011, 49% of social networking & blog site visitors also visited TV network and broadcast media sites

Read this article.

The above presentation by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project (@Pew_Internet) explores 9 commonly held assumptions about how teens and young adults use technology:

1.    Everyone uses the Internet.

2.    Every teen has a cell phone.

3.    All teens text unimaginably large numbers of messages a day.

4.    Teens no longer call anyone on the phone.

5.    Parents and K-12 schools struggle with management of teens’ phones.

6.    Teens have been supplanted by older adults on social networks.

7.    Teens love Twitter.

8.    Young adults don’t care about privacy, particularly online.

9.    Teens are active creators of content online.

See this presentation in full.

Dan Coates, president of Ypulse (@ypulse) says, “There's a fundamental shift in how media is being consumed, and Gen Y is at the epicenter of it all.”

·         In the prior week, nearly 1 in 4 members of Gen Y watched video content that was streamed to a computer, 1 in 7 downloaded video content to a computer, and 1 in 20 watched video content that was streamed to their mobile phones.

·         On average, Gen Y spends nearly 3 hours a week watching streamed TV programs, and an hour and a half a week watching downloaded TV programs.

·         Gen Y streams and downloads video from a variety of locations: they are nearly as likely to do so at home as they are at a friend's house.

·         Gen Y most commonly streams full-length, professionally produced videos, such as movies and TV shows, with music videos not far behind. College students watch a wider diversity of content than teens, with most checking out news clips, commercials, sports, and political videos in addition to long-form movies and TV shows.

He says, “The trend towards cloud-based, on-demand digital media shifts the locus of control from the producer to the consumer. Having grown up immersed in digital media, Gen Y will lead this shift.”

Read this in full.

What are the implications of these findings for publishers?

According to a study conducted in March by OnCampus Research (@CampusResearch), the research division of the National Association of College Stores, college students continue to increase their usage of e-readers, but most still prefer print textbooks. The survey of 655 students finds a 6% increase in ebook purchases in March compared to a study conducted in October, and more students are reading materials on dedicated reading devices while fewer are using laptops or netbooks. While only 15% of students say they own an e-reader, 39% report they use one, up from 19% in the October study. The number of students owning a dedicated reader in October was 8%.

Of those now owning a digital e-reader, the Amazon Kindle was the most popular, with 52% of college students owning one, compared to 32% five months ago. Other top e-reader devices included Barnes & Noble’s Nook (21%), Apple iPhone (17%), and Apple iPad (10%).

Students interested in purchasing a new e-reader are most interested in the iPad and Kindle (both 27%), followed by the Nook.

Print textbooks continue as the preferred media option among this demographic. Fully 75% of the college students in the March 2011 survey said that, if the choice was entirely theirs, they would select a print textbook. This is similar to the findings of the October 2010 e-reader survey, as well as one done in the fall of 2008.

Read the news release.