Manifesting: New Thought Takes on New Life Among Adolescents in the COVID-Era United States

Abstract

“Manifesting,” a metaphysical spiritual practice that claims that one's mind has the power to attract anything upon which it is focused, came roaring onto the social media scene in 2020, just a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic. Google searches for the term shot up by 600% and by mid-2024, videos related to manifestation had amassed over 62.8 billion views on TikTok. Yet, this practice has a long history dating back to the American New Thought movement of the late 19th century. Using scholarship on adolescent spiritual worldview formation and online data gathered from manifesting “influencers,” this article contends that today's manifesting trend is a continuation of the Moralistic Therapeutic Deism that was already characteristic of contemporary adolescent spirituality, particularly its consumerism, individualism, and “spiritual but not religious” disaffection with institutional religious affiliation. Furthermore, manifesting's rise in popularity is linked to ways the COVID-19 pandemic compounded both the typical adolescent desire for increased agency and the role social media is playing in youth worldview development. After analyzing rituals of manifestation and how they reflect and re-create broader trends of “unbundling” and “remixing” religious beliefs and practices, the article closes with a discussion of the political implications of manifestation. Ultimately, I argue that manifesting has taken on new life through social media amidst current political, social, and cultural upheavals because of how it offers an increased sense of agency for its practitioners and the ease with which it can be syncretized with existing spiritual postures.