Over the past few decades, the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated—often referred to as “nones”—has grown rapidly. In the 1970s, only about 5% of Americans fell into this category. Today, that number exceeds 25%. Scholars have debated whether this change simply reflects a general decline in belief, or whether it signals something more complex. The research team wanted to explore the deeper forces at play: Why are people leaving institutional religion? What are they replacing it with? And how are their personal values shaping that process?
It’s an American study, not sure if you are or not. When the authors describe some of the study’s shortcomings, its clear they are not suggesting these results to be generalisable over the whole world, or even the whole USA:
“This study followed one cohort of people born in the late 1980s over time, providing fine-grained detail about their lives and relationship to religion,” Schnabel noted. “That zoomed in detail is great for some things, but ultimately it tells us about one cohort of people in one country rather than how religion is changing globally or even among other cohorts of people in the United States. We can infer some things and connect the patterns for this group to others, which could allow us to see potential explanations when we see similar patterns among other groups.”
Yes, im from the U.S. I was mostly making a joke.