The Relationship Between Religiosity and Internet Use

Abstract

With the solidifying of the Internet as an influential form of mediated communica- tion has come a surge of activity among media scholars looking into what leads indi- viduals to use this emerging technology. This study focuses on religiosity as a poten- tial predictor of Internet activity, and uses a combination of secularization theory and uses and gratifications theory as a foundation from which to posit a negative relation between these 2 variables. Religiosity is found to retain a significant negative relation with Internet use at the zero order, and remains a robust negative predictor of the cri- terion variable even after accounting for a host of demographic, contextual, and situ- ational variables. Ramifications for these findings are discussed and an outline for fu- ture research building on our analyses is provided.